Distant Worlds 4X (sbaglio o non c'era un thread?)

IntJOE · August 26, 2012, 6:17am

Buongiorno.

So per certo di non essere l'unico appassionato di Strategici 4x in questo forum.
Alcuni di noi se la sono presa un po' in culo con Endless Space (

) o Legend of Pegasus (

).

L'altro giorno ho scoperto Distant Worlds, e la scimmia e' salita a mille.
Sembra un 4X piuttosto complesso dove pero' puoi lasciare la AI gestire da quasi nulla a quasi tutto. Si tratta di meta-micromanagement!

E' uscito 2 anni fa, ma Matrix Games ha continuato a supportarlo con patch ed espansioni. Pare che l'ultima incarnazione sia rifinita a dovere, e c'e' la gente in adorazione - interfaccia sistemata, funzionalita' aggiunte, e via dicendo.

Parliamo di recensioni.
Il tizio di outofeight ne e' rimasto subito entusiasta [link]
Qui invece si becca un bel 5, che sale a 8.7 e poi 9.4 man mano che il gioco viene patchato e le espansioni pubblicate. [link] [link] [link]

Il tutto sembra molto promettente. Passiamo al problema: il gioco, con le espansioni, costa 50 euro. E solo adesso che e' in offerta, perche' altrimenti sono 75.

Opinioni? Esperienze di gioco? Scimmiamoci assieme?

The.End · August 26, 2012, 6:37am

l'avevo notato anche io mentre cercavo una alternativa ad endless space e legend of cagata li però sinceramente il prezzo mi ferma 50 euro per un gioco di due anni fa

IntJOE · August 26, 2012, 7:08am

Si ma son due anni che ci lavorano!

E' inutile lamentarsi di giochi bilanciati a cazzo se poi non siam disposti a pagare a prezzo pieno un gioco che viene continuamente rifinito ed aggiustato.

Da come la mettono sembra il miglior 4X dai tempi di MoO2 (!).

DebitMan · August 26, 2012, 8:24am

Da come la mette chi?

Se qualcuno non ci mette il bollino allgamez approved non lo guardo neanche

IntJOE · August 26, 2012, 10:03am

Hai letto le recensioni?

This is obviously more expensive than the typical deal on GameDeals, so since I've played this game I thought I'd say a few words for anyone on the fence.
This is the only 4x game I've played where it's even remotely realistic to play as an empire with 500+ colonies. There's a lot of helpful automation and features designed in to let the game scale with size. For example, when you want to build 100 new destroyer-class ships, you simply say so. It will automatically distribute the order to all of the various colonies and shipyards you own to try to complete the construction optimally. Similarly, once those ships are built, if you don't give them any specific instructions they'll automatically start patrolling your mining stations and research bases to help guard against pirates.
That said, the fact that the game is so amazingly sensible in so many areas results in some nitpicks that wouldn't even be considered as anything out of the ordinary in most 4x games. For example, formation of fleets is a breeze at small empire sizes, but at larger empire sizes there's no option to, say, construct a new fleet consisting of a carrier, capital ship, 2 cruisers, etc. You have to construct the ships first and then later go back to form fleets and give them instructions.
There are resupply ships in the game which can deploy at gas giants in the field to refuel your warships, which is super-cool, but if you include one in a fleet it won't do so automatically on long trips.
You can assign a fleet to defend a sector of space from threats, but against minor threats like a nearby discovered pirate base they remain reactive. It'd be neat if they automatically destroyed the nuisance for you, or else if they decreased pirate faction spawn rates in the late game.
Another really neat feature is that you can pick a random spot in deep space to build a hidden sensor station to scan for and observe the movement of enemy ships. Space station construction isn't limited to fixed points like planets - this game scales incredibly. Unfortunately, only space stations in orbit over a colony can be upgraded to new designs as you develop new tech. If you want to upgrade stations in the field, you have to build new ones and scrap the old ones.
The colony management is very cool because you can get a list of, say, the 500 most desirable potential colonies according to a few potential scoring factors. You can then instruct your empire which ones to colonize, and it will then automatically distribute the colony ship construction order to a planet based on where it thinks the fastest place to build that ship will be. Once the ship is built it'll auto-route to the targeted potential colony and try to colonize for you. However, the construction allocation is done at the time of the initial order. For example, if a great colony that you have gets attacked and taken over by an opponent before all of its orders are completed, or worse attacked and damaged in terms of its construction speed, the orders won't change. So your top potential colonies could sit waiting unless you notice and go in to redirect a bunch of stuff manually. It would be nice if the game would maintain a central prioritized list of queued places to colonize and queued places to build mining/research bases. That way if your colony or construction ships were disrupted in some way it could reassign things accordingly.
Speaking of colonization, exploration should get a mention. Nothing to nit-pick here honestly, it's pretty great. You can tell your shipyards to construct a dozen exploration ships and they'll head out to do their thing. They'll explore unknown planets, stars, asteroids, etc, automatically. As they discover new resources and potential colonies they'll automatically update your central list which sorts by desirability, so you don't have to manually examine each thing they look at. They'll only inform you about unusual discoveries. For example, they might find an isolated colony that could be absorbed into your empire, or ancient ruins from a lost civilization from which you can learn unique technology. Or they might accidentally unleash a Silvermist nano-swarm, which you should treat with the utmost urgency if it happens. There are a ton of cool things they can discover. Remote abandoned shipyards or research stations. Remnants of some ancient and massive fleet battle which your construction ships can repair to either put into service or reverse-engineer. You might even discover an abandoned construction project of one of those ancient races. They operated on a somewhat larger scale...
I've listed a bunch of things that could be improved, but I hope the types of things listed convey how good the game is already. These are the types of things that you wouldn't even list as faults in most 4x games since you'd go into those with the expectation that you have to do everything manually, not just those things. Distant Worlds gives you enough automation to really increase the scale of what you can manage. If anyone can point out similar games in that regard I'd be interested.
Regarding the expansions, I know that they basically double the price of the game, but I honestly wouldn't bother trying the game unless you're going to get them. The expansions in this game don't just add minor things, but include fundamental interface, automation, and usability improvements. Playing the base game wouldn't necessarily give you an accurate picture of the full game.
I should mention that the game is single-player only. I hope the game goes onto Steam so that it can be exposed to a larger audience. The developer(s?) of this game should get more support so that they can improve an awesome 4x game into the perfect 4x game. A sequel that supported multiplayer would be pretty cool as well. If you're still curious or on the fence about the game, try looking up some gameplay on Youtube. There's not that much stuff on there so I'm not sure what video would be best, but even seeing a couple of minutes would give you a better idea of how the game works.
Edit: By following another link here I ran back across a review of the Legends expansion, found here: http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2011/12/distant-worlds-legends-review/. I'm not sure how helpful the review would be to those new to the game since he's mostly focused on the improvements made in that expansion. However he compares the full package favourably to the venerable Master of Orion II and regarding the price says that Distant Worlds is basically the Skyrim of 4X games.
Edit 2: Not sure if it needs to be said, but if you get this game make sure you patch it to the latest version. The same reviewer who compared the game to Skyrim and Master of Orion II pointed out that he only gave the original release of the base game a 5/10. Although it probably isn't the case right now what with the sale, the developer usually releases new patches on the game's forum before they go to official distribution.

preso da qui, se andate su reddit e' pure formattato meglio

whitetiger · August 26, 2012, 2:42pm

Questo lo lascio qui

The.End · August 26, 2012, 2:54pm

mazza la roba che c'è

Nemo1985 · August 26, 2012, 7:40pm

E' tipo Aurora?

Drest · August 26, 2012, 7:49pm

sembra pregevole, certo non costa poco.

aspetto che di anni ne abbia 4

IntJOE · August 26, 2012, 7:59pm

aspetta aspetta... tanto il prezzo non scende

The.End · August 26, 2012, 8:01pm

l'Activision degli rts

Crius · August 27, 2012, 12:25am

bon cazzi loro anche

ben fatto quanto ti pare ma con quella cifra ce ne prendi tre di bei titoli.

Inviato dal mio GT-S5570

IntJOE · August 27, 2012, 1:09am

Su questi tipi di giochi ci puoi passare centinaia e centinaia di ore. Spalmate in settimane, mesi, anni.

Se e' davvero il migliore del suo genere i 50 euro non sono neanche un problema - non e' neanche un prezzo totalmente campato in aria, viste le due espansioni, il gioco di nicchia ed il continuo supporto. Quanto vale il tuo tempo?

Il problema e' semmai che non c'e' un demo.

0.eroes.0 · August 27, 2012, 7:17am

Infatti ho prontamente cercato la demo ieri notte ma nisba.

Quindi, incuriosito, sono andato sul sito ufficiale e mi sono guardato qualche video ufficiale e ... meh! E' enorme!

Me lo studio un po' anche su youtube poi decido che fare

(intanto grazie per la segnalazione!!)

templar4522 · August 27, 2012, 9:13am

a me non piace lasciare all'ai il comando... passo.

(btw endless space non è così malvagio dai!)

0.eroes.0 · August 27, 2012, 9:26am

il combat di Endless Space non si può vedere

Per il resto sono d'accordo: non è male. Io gli darei 7.5

The.End · August 27, 2012, 9:30am

quoto lo trovi bello la prima la seconda volta anche la terza poi lo butti tutto automatico e fuck peccato perché come gioco ha una bella ui e tutto mi aspettavo un po più di micromanagement

The.End · August 27, 2012, 8:42pm

mi sono creato la demo

non c'è il multi quindi è solo singleplayer (pure 50 euro vogliono)

per adesso ho aperto solo il tutorial e sembra veramente grande

la prima impressione che mi ha dato è un aurora4x con veste grafica e sicuramente magari più approcciabile lato gameplay di quest'ultimo , credo che non muovi navi etc come nei classici rts ma gli dai delle missioni etc stile aurora4x

IntJOE · August 28, 2012, 4:23am

Moar info! Dai che fra neanche 8 ore discuto la tesi e poi ci facciamo una part... ok, ognuno per conto suo.

0.eroes.0 · August 28, 2012, 7:31am

Asd! Pensa prima alla discussione! E in bocca al lupo!