Distant Worlds -- A new 4x space strategy game

[Subotan]

Oh man, this looks cool, I'll probably get it in the summer. Can we have some screens, pretty please?

[Madoushi]

Thanks Martok, I'll keep that in mind.

Maybe I'll see if I can find some gameplay videos and such. :Smile:

[Martok]

Am continuing to have a grand time playing this game. The latest patch does indeed seem to have fixed the vast majority of the remaining bugs (at least the most egregious ones), and the game is definitely running a bit more smoothly now.

Better yet, Matrix has announced their plans for the next update already, and that the public beta for it should be available in just over a week! Here's what's on the menu:

Hi everyone,

Time for another preview of what's on the way. I just synced up with Elliot to make sure we were on the same page and I think you will be happy with the upcoming improvements and fixes.

Below are the items that will be in the next patch. Because of the rebalancing, we will have this in testing a bit longer, so we expect it to go to a public beta around the 19th.

BALANCE FACTORS

* Rebalance number of colonizable planets and abundance of resources
* Racial bonuses apply in more gradual manner for multi-racial empires
* Trade valuations for colonies, bases and tech rebalanced
* Decrease likelihood of empires colonizing in other empires systems
* Reasonable limits on arming civilian ships. AI allows for defensive weapons, with no negative impact on relationships
* Enforce size limits on Resupply Ship. Also enforce minimum percentage of space as cargo storage, etc to limit how many weapons can be on board
* Limit negative effects of poor reputation on your empire's colonies, i.e. citizens less concerned about your reputation, especially for certain races


NEW FEATURES

* Add auto-refuel option for all ships, even when manually-controlled
* Manually-controlled military ships automatically engage enemies, no need to manually select targets
* Add mass-retrofit option from Ships and Bases screen
* Allow turning off display of ships at galaxy- and sector-zoom level (fleets, bases, military ships, civilian ships, etc)


BUGS

* Fix bugs where fleets may have missions cancelled
* Fix bug with 'ghost ships' and defeated empires
* Fix other minor bugs


There may also be other items included in the patch, but this is the minimum list.

Personally, the new features that I highlighted in bold are the changes I'm looking forward to the most. However, the rebalancing work will be very welcome as well. (The abundance of colonizable worlds and resources does seem to be a bit....overly generous, for example.)

Now I just hope I can get at least one whole game in before then....

Oh man, this looks cool, I'll probably get it in the summer. Can we have some screens, pretty please?

Sadly, I'm a total ignoramus when it comes to capturing screenshots and posting them. Rest assured, I would do so if I knew how.

That being said, there's some screenshots over at Matrix. Check 'em out!

Thanks Martok, I'll keep that in mind.

Maybe I'll see if I can find some gameplay videos and such. :Smile:

There's certainly no shortage of gameplay videos, all of which can be found on Youtube under Codeforce.

[Martok]

Eurogamer Denmark rates Distant Worlds 9/10 (Google translation here). Sounds like I'm not the only one losing sleep over this game.

[Subotan]

Judging by the support this is getting, by the summer when I get it it looks like it will be fully patched

[Martok]

The official 1.04 update is now available! It includes a massive list of bug fixes, gameplay improvements, UI additions, and other changes:

Hi everyone,

Just a quick heads up that the 1.0.4 official update is now available. Here's the change list:

Change History:

v1.0.4 – May 5, 2010

Fourth Official Update

Please Note – This update does create a new save folder, although it will work with previous saves. You need to navigate to the previous version save folder to open your older saves. We recommend starting a new game in order to get the full effect of the changes and improvements, as some will not apply to older save files.

Also, this update may reset the automation settings in your Options screen. Please open the Options screen again to adjust them to your preference. Apologies for any inconvenience.

Suggestions on Game Difficulty Settings: It has come to our attention that some of the sliders intended to control difficulty may not be as intuitive as we had hoped. If you want an easier or harder game, please consider adjusting the Expansion, Aggressiveness and Home System sliders in your galaxy settings when you start a new game. Expansion controls the level of development the other AI empires start with, Aggressiveness controls how likely they are to forego diplomacy and provoke or declare war, Home System plays a huge role in how wealthy your economy is to begin with. For a harder game, try increasing Expansion a step or two (to Young or Expanding) and increasing Aggression to Unstable or Chaos, along with decreasing your Home System to Trying. For an easier game, move each of these in the other direction. We recommend trying these out in different combinations to determine what works best for you.

Bug Fixes:

1. Races with special tech now have requisite resources at startup to build ships using the special tech
2. Medical and Recreation center components now work at bases other than space ports
3. Fixed crash with defeated 'ghost' empires reappearing and 'ghost' ships visible in the mini-map
4. Fixed crash that sometimes occurred when viewing a Construction yard list sorted by some columns
5. Fixed various other minor crashes
6. Designs for Resupply ships, Colony ships and Construction ships now have size limits, even though built at colony. Size limit is current maximum base construction size. These civilian ship designs also have some minimum requirements for the number of certain component types that must be present.
7. Fixed issues with super-luxury resource distribution in small galaxies
8. Can no longer retrofit to designs that are bigger than your current construction tech allows
9. Fixed bug where freighters sometime stack up waiting to dock at a space port
10. Fixed 'GxBO' crash reported by some players
11. Fixed detached mining station bug
12. Games will no longer start with ships that you cannot build (i.e. too big)
13. Fixed a crash that could be caused when ships reverted to an invalid mission
14. AI-generated designs now always use the latest technology
15. Default colony ship designs now come with more engines, making them faster and better able to “meet” the planets they are heading to colonize
16. Retrofits are now always charged for, regardless of the method used to order them
17. The automation AI will no longer cancel retrofit missions
18. Fixed a crash when a single ship was sent to patrol a system
19. Fixed a bug that could cause invisible space monsters
20. Fixed a bug that caused the AI Empires to sometimes not build military ships
21. Fixed occasional game freezes during space battles and planetary invasions
22. Fixed a bug that could cause two ships in the same location to merge
23. Fixed a bug that would not cancel an alliance agreement with a pirate faction when you attack their ships or stations
24. Fixed retrofitting for construction, resupply and colony ships
25. Disabled command and selection popup menus when autosaving
26. The Ship Designer now properly resets values for targeting and countermeasures when the relevant components are removed
27. Fixed a crash that could happen when editing some planets in the game editor
28. Automatically designed Resort Bases no longer include bombard weapons
29. The Quameno now properly use their special tech (NovaCore reactor) in their designs
30. Government attributes are now properly updated when the government type is changed in the game editor
31. Manually recruited intelligence agents now properly use racial espionage bonuses (reflected in their starting skill levels)
32. Fixed messages explaining new racial bonuses when colonizing a new planet. These now only display when a new race has joined your empire as a result of the colonization.
33. When retrofitting space ports to larger or smaller sizes, the role now properly changes after retrofit (e.g. from medium to large space port)
34. Mining stations no longer start right next to pirate bases
35. Improved the placement of defensive bases around colonies, they should no longer be built right next to each other.

Game Balance Changes

1. The economy has been overhauled in several respects. It should now scale better and work better than in previous versions. Colony development level now comes half from population (0 at 0 population up to 50 at 500 million) and half from access to luxury resources (50 for 10 luxury resources). Colony income is reduced by local corruption, global empire corruption and corruption caused by distance from the capitol system. The larger and more populated an empire becomes, the greater the overall corruption will be, though larger empires should still be more economically powerful than smaller ones. Please also see the notes at the top of this readme for suggestions on how to make the game easier or harder, depending on your preference.
2. Racial bonuses apply in more gradual manner for multi-racial empires - will only get full bonuses if a race comprises at least half your empire's population
3. Rebalanced trade offers so that valuations for tech, bases and colonies much higher. Valuations now also scale quite dramatically based on how much the other empire likes or dislikes you
4. Research speed has been halved
5. Empires now much less likely to colonize in another empire's system
6. Your empire's reputation now has less impact on your colonies if the population at the colony is aggressive and unfriendly. In other words, citizens of war-like races aren't so concerned about you having a poor reputation.
7. Positive reputation impact from destroying pirate ships has been lowered, but positive reputation impact from destroying pirate bases has been increased.
8. Ending a war no longer completely resets attitudes, there may be some lingering animosity
9. Other empires much less likely to accept unfavourable trade offers
10. Private ships can now only be armed with a single weapon - this armament will not cause any offense when they enter other empire's systems
11. Government types have been rebalanced, resulting in less extreme values for corruption and approval
12. The AI for other empires and for your own automation is now much more careful about what ships and bases it builds, resulting in much better automated management without overspending.
13. War weariness now starts lower and increases more gradually

Fleet and Ship Management Improvements

1. Holding down the Ctrl key while right-clicking to assign a mission now overrides the default mission for the selected ship. This allows you to override the default right-click behaviour and gain access to a comprehensive pop-up menu to select the mission you want, e.g. military ships can refuel at a space port instead of patrolling it, troop transports can refuel at a colony instead of loading troops at it
2. Added filtering for ship and base icons at galaxy zoom level - can selectively enable/disable ship types displayed at galaxy level. By default civilian ships are turned off at Galaxy zoom level. Please see the Options screen, Advanced Display Options to change this to suit your exact preferences.
3. Manually controlled ships will now automatically refuel when low on fuel, and then return to their previous mission
4. Manually controlled ships will now automatically repair when damaged, and then return to their previous mission.
5. Manually controlled ships will now automatically engage enemy targets without needing to be manually directed to each target. They will then return to their previous mission, e.g. patrol, escort, etc
6. Patrol missions now automatically reset, i.e. a manually-controlled ship will stay at a patrol target until you tell it to stop
7. Fleets should stay together better than previously
8. Fleets should not cancel their missions when advisors suggest other uses for them
9. Fleet system patrolling: select a fleet and right-click a system or star to patrol all of your colonies and bases in the system
10. Fleets are now more responsive and their automatic handing of refuel and repair has been improved
11. It is now possible to assign construction ships to build mining stations at gas clouds from the sector and galaxy-level zoom.


Ship Design and Retrofitting Improvements

1. Added mass retrofit option in Ships and Bases screen. Multi-select ships and bases from the list and click the retrofit button to select the design to retrofit to. The mass retrofit cost for all selected ships and bases is shown and if you cannot afford it you will not be allowed to retrofit.
2. Upgrading designs now names them as "Old Design Name Mk2", etc
3. Added new design subroles: energy research station, weapons research station, industrial research station, high-tech research station, monitoring station, defensive base. These types of bases are no longer AI-designed if you turn off automation for ship design
4. Design screen now shows all latest designs (when Show Latest Designs selected), regardless of whether you can build them or not.
5. Added maximum weapons energy use to Design screen (top of Weapons panel) so that you can compare reactor power output to optimize military designs
6. Added energy collector to default military ship designs
7. The AI will no longer build ships of a particular type if all designs of that type are marked as obsolete
8. The AI will try to keep design sizes for destroyers and troop transports under the maximum size of your current construction tech
9. The AI will now add extra reactors to its designs to make sure the ship has enough energy for maximum effectiveness in combat and movement.

Other Improvements:

1. Expansion Planner now always shows colonization and mining targets, even when they are considered unimportant
2. Expansion Planner now uses the best location to build queued colony ships, which is not necessarily the closest colony
3. Expansion Planner now uses the best construction ship to build queued mining stations, which is not necessarily the closest construction ship
4. Slightly fewer surprise attack suggestions from advisors
5. Message added in research progress bar to indicate when you have completed all research in an area
6. Newly-recruited intelligence agents should automatically start off assigned to counter-intelligence
7. The multiple race ability popup messages will now only show a new race becoming part of your empire once
8. The Cash flow number showed at the top right of the screen now has the variable elements smoothed out (i.e. Space Port and Resort income) which should allow the income trend to match the cash flow trend more closely and with less volatility

I'd been taking a break from DW, partially because I was waiting for this update. The economy has been tightened up a bit (previously, it had admittedly been a bit too "Monty Haul"), but not as tight as in the first couple updates. Also, the additions of the auto-refuel and auto-engage options for your ships are much to be desired! I'll definitely be playing this on my day off tomorrow....

[Subotan]

Very nice. I'll certainly buy this once the exams are over in June.

[Meneldil]

I'm thinking about buying a game, and I'm willing to go either for Distant World or Hegemon. Any advice? Distant world seems to have more potential, but a step learning curve, as any 4x game. Hegemon seems funny, but not really extraordinary.