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[4X] Distant Worlds: Universe (Now on Steam! Bonus: Sane price!)
KiTA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Distant Worlds: Universe, the bundle of all the Distant Worlds games, is now on Steam. Universe collects ALL the Distant Worlds expansions and discounts them heavily, bringing the previous $120+ package down to $60 ($50 on sale until June 6th).
http://store.steampowered.com/app/261470/
Some of the expansions add crazy stuff, like playing as a pirate instead of a "traditional" 4X faction. The final expansion, Ultimate, adds extensive modding tools, basically opening the game up as an engine for future 4X games.
Introduction Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKGLh-IUxcHere's some more details from @Axen, shamelessly stolen from the previous 4 year old thread:
What is this game?
This is Distant Worlds a real time 4x space empire game of awesomeness. It was developed by Code Force.
Though maybe the official description might help more:
Distant Worlds is a vast, real-time, 4X space strategy game. Experience the full depth and detail of large turn-based strategy games, but with the simplicity and ease of real-time, and on the scale of a massively-multiplayer online game.
Vast galaxies are made to order: up to 1400 star systems, with up to 50,000 planets, moons and asteroids. Galaxies are so deep, fun and immersive that you won’t want to finish the game... Build, expand and improve your empire endlessly. The galaxy is packed with life and activity. Encounter other empires, independent alien colonies, traders, pirates and space monsters. Explore star systems, asteroid fields, gas clouds, supernovae, galactic storms and black holes. Discover evidence of civilizations long since past, uncovering secrets about the galaxy's troubled history...
Best of all, you can play the game your way: enjoy a quick, intense game in a crowded galaxy or take your time in an epic game spread across a vast galaxy!
Yeah, the galaxy is fairly massive. Your biggest limiting factor to exploring it is fuel. Your ships need fuel and burn it up while flying. Star Bases, Colonies, friendly planets are all places your ships can refuel at.
Entrepreneurs lead the way!
One real nice thing about Distant Worlds is that all your trade, mining, colonist migration, and many other things are handled by the Private sector. As your Empire grows you will see dozens and dozens of freighters, mining barges, passenger transports and so on travel to and fro. Frieghters trade goods between different worlds (not just your own). Mining barges set up various mines on moons, asteroids, gas giants, and the like. While passenger transports move migrants and colonists between your worlds (or to Resorts :P).
What this means is you do not have to worry about managing trade lanes, finding suitable places to set up mines, or micro-managing your colonists. You do have to worry about ensuring that those private citizens don't get turned in to space dust by pirates or eaten by some nasty space squid.
Make it as complicated or simple as you want!
Most everything you do in the game can be set to Automated. Ship designs, taxes, exploration, most everything about running a Galactic Empire can be set to Automate. You can also pick and choose what things (if any) you want automated. If you wish to micro-managing each facet of your empire then go ahead. On the flip side if you only want to be concerned about pew pewing alien filth and not have to worry about the day to day financial situation of your Empire then you can set it up that way.
So far it seems like building Star Bases and Ships might be the only thing you can't automate. The game will however suggest you build certain ships/bases and ask for your signature in doing so.
The finer things in life. . .
Blowing things up is not the only thing to do in Distant Worlds. What kind of 4x game wouldn't have Diplomacy and Espionage?
For the most part Diplomacy and Espionage are pretty standard here.
On the Diplomacy side you can get up Free Trade agreements, Sanctions, Alliance, Defense Pacts, exchange tech/maps. Fairly standard really. Each race/government type may make it easier/harder to be friends with various other races/governments.
Espionage is also your standard fare. I haven't used to it much yet.
The Races!
There are twenty of them in all. I'm not going to bother listing them. It too is your typical alien line-up. However, I do want to make special mention of these mother fuckers:
Oh yeah! That's right! T-Rex in spaaaaaace!
Anything else?
The game comes with a tutorial on how to play. It also has a built in Galactopedia that you can bring up at any time to find out the what/who/how of the galaxy. It is really handy and many of your in game menus will have links to the Galactopedia to explain certain terms or concepts that the menu may be showing you.
Like I mentioned before, the game runs in real time, but that doesn't mean you will be pressing down the "speed up time" button until something happens. Everything moves fast enough in real time that you will be dealing with numerous situations quite often. Pirate attacks, squid monsters, new planets discovered, new Empire found, pirate attacks. Many things to keep you busy. Plus your ships move rather fast between star systems.
As far as those Private Sector ships go, you'll see tons and tons of them flying this way and that. It really does help to make the galaxy feel more alive. It also doesn't hurt that the ships are all named too! Even pirate ships.
Speaking of pirates. In my current game I was dealing with two pirate factions at once. This was quite annoying as a pirate ship would warp in, take some pot shots at some freighters, then warp away when my frigates arrived. So I tracked down one of the pirate factions bases. I called in my fleet and totally annihilated the place. Didn't even lose a single ship. This apparently so impressed the other pirate faction that they decided to surrender to me and hand over all their ships and their base. Fucking score.
Screenshots?
Well, Distant Worlds certainly isn't the prettiest girl at the ball, but she is guaranteed to put out.
Mods!
The game seems to be easily moddable. There are many mods that change everything to Star Wars, Star Trek, Star (insert whatever here).
Anyway, here is a link to a little mod collection. You can also find many more in the forums there.
However, I find this particular mod to be a must have.
Message Alarm Mod. The default event alarm sound will drive any man insane. This one is much better. :P
+1
Posts
Some pirates took the frigate over in my system and just left it sitting there, any tips on how to board it and take it over?
That said, buying it from Matrix is definitely a flashback to the bad old days of digital downloading- download link only available for 14 days, you have to register on another website to get your Steam key, the website is poorly written and designed, and makes you enter your password to redeem despite being logged in..
And yes. Matrix Games is one of those grognard specialty publishers. Their website is horrible, their digital distribution model is like the Model T of distribution models, and their pricing is crazy. They have a few totally essential wargames in their catalog though. If you want Harpoon for example, they are the ones you have to get it from. So I was pretty happy when this showed up on Steam and I'd love it if they'd fucking relent and start putting more of their games on Steam. I'd love to see Harpoon: ANW and Commander Edition on Steam for example.
edit: I should say I was pretty close to shilling out $150 for gal civ 3 if that gives any impression on my taste for 4x games
So I guess what it does more than other 4X games is macro-strategy gameplay in a deeply simulated and vast galaxy, which allows you to zoom down to the micro-strategic scale and get your hands dirty playing with nitty gritty details in the areas that interest you.
I'm probably missing something, but it doesn't feel like I have a great deal of control over building out my economy in particular. Diplomacy has also seemed incredibly shallow so far. In Space Empires, when things start going wrong due to resource failure I can take immediate action to start trying to rectify it. In Distant Worlds, I constantly seem to be short of necessary materials no matter how much I try to bribe mercenaries to smuggle them to me or how many colony ships I send out looking.
I'm a bit disappointed to be honest - the internet seemed wild for it but it just isn't doing it for me yet.
Scientist-Emperor Rhan and the Imperium of Man shall inherit the stars!
Also, some alien races have ludicrously easy to reach unique victory conditions. Keep your home planet? Perform the least research? Have the longest lasting treaty? It's ridiculous.
In the first tutorial, I find myself perpetually short of helium, of all things - like, construction all over the place getting delayed because we're out of it. There's a gas giant in my home system with, like, 92% helium (whatever that actually means).
I've ordered up and paid multi-thousands of credits for a gas mining platform there, but no one will build it.
Also, my military advisor piped up with, "Hey - we've got this awesome fleet. We should go trash this pirate base. Yes / No?" So, I said "Yes."
I think my fleet lasted all of ... 3s? Maybe? Cost me a fleet admiral and a ship captain, too ...
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I think the % just means how fast it collects, I don't know what helium is used for but it sounds like you need to set up a smuggling order for helium and get that gas miner built. Also, do you have any private sector mining ships you can send there?
Helium's used for just about everything, as near as I can tell. Ships, stations, lots of components, etc. I've got a smuggling order on my one planet (still waiting for colonization to research).
You can order private sector ships around? I thought they were AI only.
Anyway, I sent a construction ship over there, and it just leaves to go do something else.
I'll probably just move on to the next tutorial.
Also, cash flow seems ... off. I've got a massively negative cashflow at the moment, but my cash-on-hand just keeps increasing. Not sure what's going on there. (Also, "Bonus Income" or "Extra Income" or whatever - what does that mean?)
So many questions!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Is it normal for it to fluctuate wildly?
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I like that the AI takes care of almost everything because I can see it getting very confusing in later game. It kind of reminds me of Star Ruler but quite a bit deeper
I think so. Tourism revenue and such is really sensitive to piracy, wars, and such. So unless you're running an extremely peaceful empire, it'll probably vary a bit.
I'm not exactly sure where most of my money comes from either :P
That's 'cause it is.
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3508583
Obnoxious is another. Seems like there's good advice in there but I'm too irritated to remember any of it.
The RPS piece really went a ways to convincing me. Where did this come from though? It seems like it should have 100% been on my radar but it's somehow got like 5 expansions and only now am I hearing about it.
Basically this: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GodEmperor
Whoever wrote that guide is a grade-A cockmongrel. Couldn't stand the obnoxious writing style.
Yep, that's it. Subtract the asymmetrical rule set of AI War and yeah the similarities are striking. A big focus on the macro layer of strategy, with the ability to get very micro in most areas of the game. I really love the espionage in this game too. I have two agents that are basically the interstellar versions of James Bond. Everywhere they go shit explodes and enemies die. I have a lot of fun planning their next missions and imagining the particular details of their escapades.
But yeah, @Basil sold me on this game months ago with the AI War comparison. I was actually planning on gathering the game up piecemeal on Matrix's site so thank god for this Steam release. I'm probably one of the few people who saw that price tag and shouted PRAISE BE TO GABEN (IA! IA!) WHAT A BARGAIN!
damn you all
You know you love it.
Yeah but
I like it when it automates a lot of stuff, and I just get to set the parameters in which it is automated. Technically, that doesn't tend to net you optimal results (the computer is no genius) but I find it more fun. I like to make major decisions and oversee it all while most things handle themselves.
I was doing well and had 4 colonies up, expansion seemed to be going well. However, when my fleet was in the shop for repairs those nasty humans declared war and just butchered me.
Lessons learned:
1) Keep a defence force in good repair.
2) Ground troops are much more important than I realized in this game.
Question: Is there a way to manually create a second fleet? I can't seem to find the button.
There's always Distant Worlds Extended mod, adds a bunch of races, and changes race graphics.
Right click on a ship. In the dropdown menu there will be an option to add the ship to a current fleet or start a new one.
And by good margin I mean outclassing the next two or three species put together. IF someone gets uppity, destroying an empire or two calms them down real quick-like.