PC: Distant Worlds (Space 4X from Matrix)

[Syt]

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/379/details/Distant.Worlds

Features

    * Truly Epic-Scale Galaxies: play in galaxies with up to 1400 star systems and 50,000 planets, moons and asteroids. Vast nebula clouds spiral out from the galactic core, shaping the distribution of star clusters in the galaxy
    * Private Enterprise: the private citizens of your empire automatically take care of mundane tasks like mining resources, transporting cargo, migration between colonies, tourism and much more. This frees you from micro-management and instead allows you to focus on a macro-scale
    * Intelligent Automation: automate the various tasks in your empire, so that you can focus on the areas that you enjoy most. Or have your advisors make suggestions in different areas like colonization, defence or diplomacy – helping you learn the best tactics and strategies
    * Explore: explore the vast galaxy, discovering valuable resources, potential colonies for your empire and making contact with other empires. Uncover secrets that lift the veil on the galaxy's mysterious past...
    * Colonize: send out colony ships to found new worlds for your empire. Develop your new colonies by keeping them well-supplied with a steady stream of valuable resources
    * Defend: patrol the outlying areas of your empire to protect from raiding pirates or dangerous space monsters. Construct defensive bases at your colonies. Build up your fleets to defend against enemy empires. Recruit troops to invade enemy colonies and conquer the galaxy!
    * Diplomacy: interact with other empires, discussing treaties, making trade offers or just giving them a piece of your mind. Talk to pirate factions, tapping into their underground information, or paying them to do your dirty work for you...
    * Espionage: covertly seek out information about other empires, or even disrupt their progress with acts of sabotage
    * Research: develop new technologies for use in building your own unique ships and star bases
    * Build: design and build the ships and star bases in your empire. Construct mighty military ships at your space ports, or build mining stations, research installations or secret monitoring facilities at remote locations throughout the galaxy
    * Built-in Game Editor: fine-tune your own galaxy, adding or removing star systems, planets, asteroid fields, ships, star bases, space monsters or anything else. Modify the attributes of any empire in your game
    * Extensive Help: exhaustive, built-in, context-sensitive help is always only a single key-press away. Press F1 at any time for a detailed explanation of the current game screen, your currently selected item, etc
    * Tutorials: in-game tutorials familiarize you with all of the game elements and tools
    * Built-in Customization: modify all ship art, alien races, and much more. Switch between different customization sets with a couple of mouse clicks from the main game menu

Developer page:
http://www.codeforce.co.nz/

Screenies:
http://www.codeforce.co.nz/gallery.asp

[Tonitrus]

I was just looking at this one.  Seems very promising, with only a few concerns (such as how annoyingly private the "private citizens" self-management will be).

[Richard Hakluyt]

Looks interesting, wonder how retarded the private citizens are going to be 


Incidentally, that Kiwi accent is barbarous 

[Jaron]

What the hell, why not?

[The Brain]

We have found techology that advances our understanding of Computer, leading us to disco.

WTF

[Josquius]

Hope the map doesn't suck

[Grallon]

I've been reading the Chanur novels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chanur_novels) lately and I'm hitching for some space action - to capture the thrill of a merchant ship plying the star lanes.  This looks interesting. 



G.

[Tonitrus]

Two new gameplay videos.

http://www.codeforce.co.nz/videos.asp#exploration

Paused a number of times to catch the details not talked about.  Looking quite promising.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Will it cost $70 and require 4 hours to play one turn?

[Berkut]

Will it cost $70 and require 4 hours to play one turn?

Probably not. :sad:

[Jaron]

Will it cost $70 and require 4 hours to play one turn?

[Cecil]

Will it cost $70 and require 4 hours to play one turn?

Looks like RTS.

Assuming the AI isnt borked and you can leave the minutae to the comp I think this could be a winner.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Will it cost $70 and require 4 hours to play one turn?

Looks like RTS.

Assuming the AI isnt borked and you can leave the minutae to the comp I think this could be a winner.

It's concept looks as good as Space Empires IV Gold. Shitty AI made that game a boring chore.

[Syt]

New video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWvxkud56K4

And a post by SoM over at Wargamer (he's in the beta team AFAIK).

Did you see my comments on the living world and the civilian economy? That is a really interesting aspect of the game and makes it a bit special. I think that was either on Matrix or Wargamer.com (as Son_of_Montfort, remember).

Here is what I will say, If you are looking for the below, you will probably like DW:
1. Something on the scope of Lost Empire: Immortals but with a much more detailed tech and economic system and with some automation to make that 1000 star universe more manageable. Further, there is more active diplomacy and research has more "life" than LE:I. But I would say DW takes the scope of LE:I and succeeds in the places where LE:I failed. LE:I was an ambitious game, one that could have been good had the studio been able to iron out the bugs and fully realize their vision. I think DW is MORE ambitious and actually realizes much of the vision of the developer.

2. If you want a 4X space game that has a living universe with NPC ships populating it. If you felt like Sword of the Stars or even MoO2 was overly abstracted, you will love DW. What other 4X space game has Luxury liner ships that travel to space resorts (you built) that overlook scenic areas like nebula or ring planets? What other game do you see space docks building civilian cargo ships to transport your mined resources from starbase to starbase? Sure, these things are simply graphical representations of number in the game (i.e. tourism profits, the movement of goods) but they serve more of a purpose than that - want to squelch an enemy's tourism cash flow - blow up luxury liners like a pirate. Want to cripple his supply of the rare vodka like drink that keeps his population happy and growing - destroy his cargo ships from that planet.

3. Are you looking for a sandbox game, then this one is certainly that. Strangely enough, I would say that DW is the "Dwarf Fortress" of 4X games. No - it isn't quite THAT deep, but what I mean is that the player gives macro-directives (build this here, send ships there) that are carried out by the unit AI. So a little like Tropico, even, set in space. Perhaps the best analogy would be Europa Universalis in space, which certainly is a bit apt, but even that doesn't encompass the whole thing. There is certainly a bit of a "laissez faire" aspect to the game - you can be contented simply watching your empire's engines hum without doing much of anything - so the management really depends on the player. I haven't yet put everything on full auto and simply set the game running and returned an hour later to see what had happened - but I imagine it would have built a pretty efficient empire without any input from me at all. Maybe this is a criticism of the game, but I'm not sure that it should be - what this means is - you tailor your own involvement to your comfort zone. If you want to play Space Opera Ant Farm - go at it - if you want to play Detail Oriented Perfectionist Emperor Sim - do it.

4. Going along with #4 - if you are looking for a MoO3 that actually works - then DW might just be it. The idea of macro-planning, macro-control is elegantly carried out here. The story is unobtrusive, and you work to build a huge empire and protect that empire from outside forces and internal inertia. So if you were excited by the larger scale planned for MoO3, but found the execution lacking, then you might love DW.

If you are looking for the below - then you might be disappointed:

1. MoO2. This ain't it. It ain't Galactic Civilizations 2 either. If you want pages of text describing each technological breakthrough, if you want to control what buildings your planets build, if you want to see the farming production of your agricultural worlds - then DW isn't going to cut it. Unlike EU the tech levels do have personality and names, but you are going to see more - red shield (Tech 1) is upgraded to blue shield (Tech 2), which is 5% better than red shield (although do note that some tech upgrades require different levels of resources to build, so there is a difference in function in that you have to be able to support building the upgrades). You can design ships, but I wouldn't say that you are going to see the weapon variety of Sword of the Stars or the intricate Min-Max of MoO2. There is some similarity to Imperium Galactica - but again, you aren't going to be zooming down to colonies to be a city planner (of course, with 30+ colonies being common and a smallish empire, would you want to).

2. Aurora with a better graphics engine. A while back, Wargamer.com was rocked by a little freeware 4X game (or excel spreadsheet that played like a game) called Aurora. I would say that it was the equivalent of the Harpoon CE series set in space. Some people saw DW and thought - hey, this may be something close. It isn't. You can control ships in real-time battles, but your strategic options are not going to be ultra detailed. You can flank, and move around enemy ships, and use higher range, but don't expect calculating parsecs and such. In fact, I would say that the default for combat is to let the AI units control handle it. You don't have to, and you can have a lot of fun controlling battles. Certainly there is a lot of detail in MACRO (see a trend here) level war planning - like setting up refueling bases or sending refueling ships to make sure your warships have the striking range needed. So, in some ways, war plays a little like WitP - you are more the logistics planning High Admiral of the Fleets than the Space General or captain of a vessel. That will excite some, and maybe be a disappointment to others - I just wanted to clear this up for people who were hoping for intricate battle control.

So I hope this helps. DW takes methods and ideas used in other games and fuses them into something unique. In many ways you can see the similarities to Imperium Galactica (agents, real-time, story that appears via exploration in space), Lost Empires: Immortals (HUGE universe, galactic emperor rather than city planner or hive mind controller of every action, abstracted tech - but not as abstracted as LE:I), MoO 3 (ship design, large scale decisions to support a grand empire, diplomacy that has several options for treaties, races that are fleshed out - hate certain other types of races from the get-go, have certain powers and bonuses, look like baby seals [j/k]), Gal Civ 2 (space tourism a money maker - albeit not abstracted in DW and using real ships, taxes the end-all-be-all, resources that give bonuses to growth), Stars! (ship components require certain minerals/resources, the mining and transport of minerals/resources will be a huge part of the game, did I mention that resources are on every planet and you will obsess over them to get them back to your star bases to fuel your war machine, oh yeah and minerals/resources are going to be a big factor - ed. note: if you never played Stars! this last "joke" will go over your head), and even Sword of the Stars (random encounters, exploration a major goal of the game, SPACE MONSTERS!!1!1!!).

That's my $0.02. If you are on the fence, then please, watch for other impressions. I really see a lot of people liking this one, but I know that certain people, who have certain expectations, might feel led astray. I hope this post clears that up.

[MadImmortalMan]

I am very intrigued.