PC: Distant Worlds (Space 4X from Matrix)

[Razgovory]

I've played the game a bit.  Stuff just sort of happens.  I feel like a Space President who has people who has no idea what he's doing and is led around by space advisers.

[Syt]

I gave up my previous game. I had started pre-warp and expensive research. By the time I could get into space and claim colonies, pirate factions were so powerful that they kept kicking my ass and/or emptying my coffers. Other empires weren't doing much better. Having to hire troops on each colony to stomp out pirate bases didn't help. So I quit.

I'm currently playing the Haakonish Consortium (I always play random race), with story events (which I normally don't). The gist: the galaxy rises from the dark ages, but the Antarans Shadows Reapers Shakturi threaten to return and destroy the galaxy. It also creates a bunch of artifact sites around the galaxy to discover and exploit (at which the AI isn't very good, I think).

I always play with race victory conditions. For the Haakonish it means: conducting the most trade, doing the most intelligence missions, intercept the most intelligence missions, and controlling at least one of three unique resources in the galaxy. I control in my game the fleet compositions, ship building, diplomacy, research and warfare, though I have advisors turned on. I don't like messing with the ship design, because I'm too lazy to update designs every time I research new tech, and my understanding is that humans will, in general, be much more effective than the AI - the AI is programmed in part for flavor.

I started next to another Haakonish empire, the Alshat Syndicate (at least they didn't start in the same system as I as sometimes happens). I've tried playing peaceful mostly, but my trade income has snowballed to a point where I have by far the most powerful military, and thanks to tech trades I'm pretty much as high tech as I currently can be. So I've taken a few neighboring colonies when their owners were distracted, or one of my few allies was in a war against them. Or when pirates had taken over a foreign colony. The trick is to declare war, take a few colonies a.s.a.p. and then peace out - my species + government (mercantile guild) are not made for prolonged wars as it will make people unhappy.

I've also made the switch to assimilating aliens (default settings for Haakonish is to reject non-Haakonish and resettle aliens from outside our reptilian species group.

I'm playing on the largest map (1400 stars) in a spiral galaxy. I find that 25 empires might be too many, because this is what the map looks like after close to 40 years. If I hadn't set a colonizing range limit of 1.75 sectors it would probably look much worse.



I'm the red blob near the center with a few colonies in "the North", 38 total. To the South, in the slightly yellow/greenish hue is the Alshat Syndicate. We're in a mutual defense treaty. I managed to snag two colonies from them early on when they had a revolt problem and they flipped to me. I managed to take two more colonies from them when they lost them to the neighboring insectoid Pictoris Collective (yellow, East).

The white ones is the Helicon Corporation. They're Riktoh from the ursidian family, and pretty passive and reliable. Though they did snatch a colony from me when it was briefly taken over by pirates.

To the "North", the brown blob, is the United Ardo Technocracy, a Napoar mechanoid empire. They're also very passive, plus stupid and friendly.

The light blue blob at the bottom left is Ugnari Industries, a rodent Empire that has as its government form "Way of the Ancients" which is an über-government that can be discovered by exploration (its counterpart is "Way of Darkness", chosen by the rather insignificant dark brown Jintus, north of the Ugnari).

The light brown nieghbors of mine are Naxxilian reptiles, the Culroon Enclave. We're getting along fine (helped by both being reptiles), but I'm pretty annoyed that they colonized that one spot in the middle of my territory.

To my West is the Wekkarus Authority, a military dictatorship. They had an early bloom, but got cut down in size by their neighbors, including me:



At one point they were down to two colonies, but with new colonization tech it seems they managed to claim a few worlds they couldn't previously live on. The two worlds on the left and the three at the bottom were originally taken by the (purple) Sluken Collective, an insectoid race next door. They're often tied down in wars, so it was easy to take those outliers from them.

The South is a bit of a mess, because the Alshat Syndicate and I had a bit of a scramble for colonies:



I originally only had Rana, Sharaf, Beta Reticuli, and Haako. Vistar and Rurik flipped early on during a period of unrest in the Syndicate. Farsloe and Mamuna were taken from Alshat by the Pictoris Collective, and then by me. Sharaf, as said, was taken by Helicon when pirates had taken it over.


My next war will be against the Helicon. They have no allies, and I have five fleets with ground troops standing by. Besides Sharaf, I will try to take their border worlds which are relatively low in development, with up to 500 million inhabitants each:



Additionally, I will attempt to take Atkoah, but not sure if this will work, because it's a system with 4 colonies, and close to 10 billion people, so I expect heavy resistance. Not in space - I will send 6 of my 12 fleets, and should have more than enough space power. Ground troops will be the real challenge. I expect I may need a million troops for Atkoah (and another million for the other worlds).



In the long run I will have to go for Ardo - they control two of the three unique resources (Korribian Spice and Megallos Nut). At the same time they have an ancient world devastator test site nearby, and in the tech trading screen I've seen that they've salvaged the technology from it, so not sure I want to go to war with them. 

P.S.: I didn't notice when I took the screenshot, but they actually control ALL THREE unique resources - it's in Arabat, between the other two sources. That explains their astronomical trade revenue. I guess that monopoly requires breaking.



At the same time, I'm by now so rich and powerful, the only thing that could screw me over would be a prolonged war with several neighboring empires, the return of the Shakturi (possibly - haven't encountered them in game yet, as I normally play without them), building too many fleets/stations, or running out of critical resources (resources on planets can run out, but you can occasionally find new deposits). Even pirates are just a nuisance, and most colonies are defended by defense batteries that make quick work of the intruders.

[Syt]

What I would really like in the game, though, are a few more options:
1. Trading colonies (it would, e.g. be nice to return liberated colonies to the original owner, maybe a "core" system like in EU)
2. Option to block "tech brokering" - one of the earlier Civ games had the option that nations could only trade techs they had researched themselves, not ones they had acquired by trade. Tech trading is a bit too easy in DW, and you can only play with or without it, without middle ground.

There's been no major shake ups in my current game so far, mostly, because the game generated mostly relatively complacent empires (the extended mod has 40 races, this game started me with 24 in 25 empires, plus more in neutral/independent settlements), and even though I put galaxy aggression one level above normal, wars have been pretty limited so far.

[Alcibiades]

I had to turn off pirates respawning, was just too much for me in my last game.  Also turn off tech trading, it ends up just being annoying.


In regards to the Shakturi, they're a complete pain in the ass.  Run around with really difficult fleets and planet destroyers which nuke your planets and often have the effect of nuking a fleet you have sitting near it before they can react.

So if they come in prepare for a surprise....

[Syt]

Yeah, I normally play without tech trading, but I keep respawning pirates. Unless you start pre-warp, then you can deal with them relatively easily later on (I also use intelligence agents to steal tech/blow up bases for them, and occasional merc contracts).

[Syt]

Btw, I've tried the Star Trek mod, but I don't think it's quite there yet (I tried 1.3.3).

And as I go to check its status I notice that the modder removed the mod, because the creator of the original mod for Shadows asked him to. Shame.

[Alcibiades]

Yeah, I normally play without tech trading, but I keep respawning pirates. Unless you start pre-warp, then you can deal with them relatively easily later on (I also use intelligence agents to steal tech/blow up bases for them, and occasional merc contracts).

I was pretty far into the game and pirates were just too much.   On normal speed I was getting a pirate attack notification once a second, even with all known bases remotely near me destroyed.  Was just too much.

[Syt]

You can hire mercs for protection. When you go to diplo screen it will tell you what type of pirates each group is (raider, smuggler, merc). Mercs will generally come to your aid when you're under attack (if they time it right).

You can also select a colony/base that's attacked/raided a lot, and in the bottom left corner there should be a button that lets you hire mercs to protect that place.

[Razgovory]

I got a question Syt, How do you get all those neat arrows on your screens?  When I was doing AARs for CM all I could get was squiggly lines from MS paint.

[Syt]

In pain there's a panel "shapes". It's not as nifty as bezier curved ones you had in the old Paintshop Pro, but it gets the job done. And I suck doing them in Photoshop. 

[Syt]

V2.0 of the Picard Era Star Trek mod for DW:Universe is out:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3794736

30 TOTAL PLAYABLE STAR TREK RACES & 4 PIRATE GROUPINGS
(The Shakturi and Mechanoid DW Races are not playable but are available for non-canon DW play.)

23 PLAYABLE MAJOR STAR TREK RACES
ANDORIAN, BAJORAN, BENZITE, BORG, BREEN, CARDASSIAN, CHALNOTH, DOMINION, FEDERATION, FERENGI, GORN, HIROGEN, KAZON, KLINGON, KTARIAN, NAUSICAAN, REMAN, ROMULAN, SHELIAK, SON'A, TAMARIAN, THOLIAN & YRIDIAN

7 PLAYABLE BUT 'STATIC' (They will assault, but do not colonize) MINOR RACES
ACAMARIAN, ANTICAN, BYNARS, CALDONIAN, LURIAN, MALON & VIDIIAN

4 PLAYABLE PIRATE FACTIONS
THE ORION SYNDICATE, THE MAQUIS, THE 8472 BARBARIANS & THE KORGOTH PRIVATEERS

- Shipsets - 25 playable races have their own shipset. 5 playable, static minor races share a generic shipset. Pirate factions share 2 specific shipsets. The 8472 Barbarians have their own shipset.
- Characters - Currently 750+ character images, over 1500 characters (some share a generic image)
- Troop images - All races have their own set.
- Dialogue - All races have their own dialog.
- Flagshapes - All races have their own flag and color schemes.
- Music - 44 tracks from Star Trek The Next Generation's first 3 seasons composed by Ron Jones (Fair Use Respected), plus others.
- System names - Over 8,500 Star Trek and other astronomical system names can be generated for variety.
Over 1,000 Star Trek Milky Way Galaxy systems in the UFP map (Included in the 'maps' folder)
- Race files - Completed. Please report any major issues. Race files can be modified.
- Bias settings - Completed. Please report any issues. Race biases can be modified.
- Policy files - Completed. May require more balance tweaking, please report any issues.
- Victory conditions - Completed. Please report any issues. Race victory conditions can be modified.
- The Borg race shipset size-scaled to near-canon (at least closely!)
- New Governments included - Hegemony, Religious Unity (Race Specific ~ Bajoran only) and Federation (Race Specific ~ Federation (UFP) only)
{See Galactopedia article(s) for info}
- New Race Family: Biomechanical (Borg & Bynars)
- Star Trek Era plagues added {See Galactopedia article(s) for info}
- Each Race has their own specific Star Trek UI icons and graphics (located in the images\UI\chrome\[The Race Name]\folder)
UI icons and graphics can be modified. Das123 has created his "Das Chrome for Star Trek PE Mod v2.0" UI mod which is fully compatible and is the UI and graphics shown in his YouTube "Let's Play Star Trek The Picard Era" Version 1.0 and 2.0 mod recordings.
- Each Race may have their own specific diplomacy music (located in the Sounds\Effects\[The Race Name]\folder)
4 Files appropriately named: diplomacyMoodAngry ~ diplomacyMoodHappy ~ diplomacyMoodMenacing ~ diplomacyMoodNeutral
- Minimum garrisoned troop per colony set to 4 for defense against invasion or pirate raids.
- Rumors of Crystalline Entity sightings (replaces the Silvermist), see Galactopedia article for more info.
- Select Star Trek Resource images and Component additions. Galactopedia entries have been updated.
- 103 total New Planet Landscapes available for Game Editor use, including Star Trek specific 'Race Homeworld' Landscapes.
- Some weapon effect and sound replacements. More Star Trek 'Faction-Specific' Weapons and components added in the research tech trees.
- Message pop ups appear as Starfleet PADDs.
- Numerous Star Trek sound effects.
- Shakturi and Mechanoids are not overwritten so you can still play the story, just with your choice of the Star Trek races.
- Milky Way Galaxy 4 quadrant star map with Star Trek races' homeworld and owned system placements.
- Numerous Star Trek independent races and pirates spread throughout the galaxy (setting specific).

[Alcibiades]

Looks pretty awesome, let me know how it is.  Might try it out next week or so. 

[MadImmortalMan]

So, if you're playing as pirates and you find a colony ship, what do you do with it?

[Syt]

I've never played as pirates, so I honestly don't know.