Thanks Bandus for this nice over view of your experiences so far with the game. I know the lack of the demo has been the largest road block as to why I haven't purchased the game. Yeah, I think there may be too much managing/micro-management gameplay for my taste. But I will probably give this game a purchase when I see it drop some more in price. But if they put out a demo and I like it I will buy at current price without issue.

Apparently there's an expansion on the horizon: Return of the Shakturi

Promo vid screenshots here

promo vid for easy watching:

Well, I haven't played either DW or it's expansion yet but one of the main poitns raised in the review was the interface problems. However, the expansion appears to have significantly upgraded that:

User Interface Improvements

Action Buttons - One-click access to common tasks, enabling you to easily manage most of your empire directly from the main screen

Colonize planets, build mining stations and other bases

Construct new ships and bases at space ports and colonies

Select enemy targets to attack

Empire Navigation Tool - Set of scrollable lists that provide quick access to everything in your empire: colonies, space ports, fleets, potential colonies, potential mining stations, etc.

Hover over an item in the list to ping its location in the main view

Click an item in the list to select it, double-click an item to move to it

Enemy Targets List - Shows all known enemy targets

Click a target to assign the nearest available fleet to attack it

Or cycle your fleets to attack with the selected fleet

Build Orders - Mass-produce many new ships in one simple step

I wonder if he could be persuaded to take another look....

Woah, kinda touchy there, fella, aintcha?? Ok, I didn't make the connection that this was your review. Sorry for that. And I apologise if referring to you in the third person touched some kind of weird nerve. It would have cost you nothing to simply point out your ownership, you know. 'twas an honest mistake.

And yes, I am perfectly aware that your review centred on the main game only, thank you. I think you should take from my comments the fact that I was interested enough in your first opinion - which I re-read prior to commenting - to wonder how you'd receive this new expansion. Slightly less so now I feel like I've been put on the defensive simply for stating an innocent and genuine desire...but still you did some excellent analysis there. I didn't agree with every point, naturally, but I held off buying the main game because of it. It would be a shame to not build upon that sterling work with your opinion of the expansion. But please, don't put yourself out on my account.

Hey adamsolo

Thanks for the review for DW, i agree with most of the issues you pointed out.

I took the plunge last year to purchase DW and I was frustrated with some of the short comings. But after understanding the mechanics of the game I started to enjoy the game immensely.

I'll look forward to your review on the expansion pack. I'll make my decision on whether to purchase it or not.

Funny how AI pretends to be smart and automate things you don't want to do, but actually fails at simple tasks like exploring or colonizing. My explorers can stuck in same system for hours, trying to "explore" star itself or every damn rock in a system. Colony ships flying in enemy space while enemy colony ships trying to colonize systems in my empire. Automated fleet hunting harmless mosters and ignoring dangerous pirates... Oh yes, new research system featured in addon works better, but AI doesn't want to build any research labs and forces me to do it manually...

a few points i brought this game and expansion they seme reasonable but went to the forums

no dev interaction with player base , they seem to actively discourage discussion of the game unless youre a pro member

the attitude is like well we know but we either dont have resources or dont care to actually work on it to make it a game u want to buy.

Dunno its medicore but there seems to be no move on the game developers from new zealand tol actaully do anything with it. Quite a few crashes to so buyer beware on this one

I bought it but was massively disappointed. It has a few nice ideas and the sense of scale in this game is huge but it has way too many problems. Firstly you have only a tiny amount of control over your empire. You can't micromanage planets, control certain ships or even how your empire is meant to be ruled. Secondly, it's a huge mess. The interface is a nightmare, there are truckloads of redundant information scattered in the menus, the intelligence system is useless and designing your own ships isn't of much use either. It really feels like they had a ton of ideas (not necessarily good ones) and tried to fit them all in a single package. The result is a bit of a disaster. Armada is a much better game in every aspect.

I just played with the game with the shakturi expansion installed so I can't judge the base game.

I also concur with most of the critiques offered before but I still am quite happy to have buyed it and spent a reasonable amount of time playing it.

While really far from being perfect I recognize a bigger than usual level of originality and divergence from the 4X space game canon. The real-time aspect that single-handedly managed to let it stay unused for months in my hard disk before finding the will to honestly try it is well done and quite manageable. The Shakturi surprise is quite nice, at the least for the first three or four times.

The private sector was an eye-opener, while basically a why to mask the various automations of the game this way to do it is consistent an feel more realistic than anything I have seen side of Sim City.

Said that now I'm looking forward to the next expansion, let's hope that aside of something new they manage to solve also some of the old problems.

I do believe this game has a sequel, not too much up on 4x games as I don't play them but their appears to be plenty of vids on YouTube about it.