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I started feeling the urge to start playing Distant Worlds again after binging on astronomy documentaries one afternoon a while back, and finally got around to getting a hold of the expansion (Return of the Shakturi). Anyone else here played it?


For anyone unfamiliar with it, it's a 4x RTS, with a massive map (up to 1400 stars, and 50 thousand planets/moons/asteroids) and a great deal of automation, most of it completely optional. The expansion adds some new technology, rebalances the components used in designing ships, overhauls the mediocre tech system of the original into three tech trees which operate simultaneously, and which can be guided in a more traditional manner (meaning things actually get researched, something which happened rarely in the original...), and adds some new "story" elements.


In my most recent game, I've been playing a human military dictatorship, conquered two empires out of... fourteen, I believe it was, plus any that formed spontaneously, been running a deficit of 50-100% of my income, and inexplicably have around one and a half million of whatever the unit of currency is supposed to be (for reference, the average warship costs between 2000 and 5000, and I'm losing something like 70,000 above my income per year due to maintenance costs). Inexplicable despite the fact that I sell a tiny fraction of my tech for the entire bank balance of other empires on a regular basis, along with any technology they have and I don't. After... something like ten hours of playing, I'm roughly one sixth of the way to the victory conditions (control 66% of the galactic population, or 66% of the galactic GDP; I'm at ~10% for both)... Of course, this is an absurdly large game, with the full 1400 stars and 14 competing empires (maximum is actually 19 opponents, for a total of 20 empires, I think; I don't know if spontaneously formed ones count for that).

I've been wondering about the usefulness of fighters and stealth tech. For the first, I haven't seen enough to know if they're worth the cost and size of fighter bays, and for the latter, I don't know if the AI is bright enough to make hiding things from long range sensors useful in the least, since they don't seem to ever build any, preferring to scout with exploration ships. Anyone have any experience with either (beyond spamming fighter bays on starports that end up never getting attacked, or only seeing fighters in action with a capital ship and fleet of cruisers and destroyers to back them up)?