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Conquering galaxies far far away.

Distant Worlds: Universe is now available, DRM-free on GOG.com with a 67% launch discount until December 26.
Welcome to a sprawling 4x space RTS-with pause filled with life, challenges, and opportunity. Galactic storms, alien civilizations, black holes, space pirates and monsters - they are all in a collision course with your ambitions, as you explore up to 14,000 star systems made up of 50,000 planets and make your own destiny.

Check out the rest of the Slitherine Ltd. space epics which arrived together with this at GOG.com.

Watch the trailer.
Post edited December 05, 2017 by maladr0Id
This game is the greatest hidden gem I know of. Or: the greatest game you haven't heard of. Or just the greatest 4X, right? I dunno w/ my experience. It can take some time investment to learn, but it is worth it. I really haven't played it enough, though and my comments here are going to be a bit lazy... before I get into my modding notes which will be the rest of this post, just note that the "components" in the game to build different stuff -- you can just assemble them however and they'll do as they say. For example, "Research Outposts" don't have to follow certain rules -- the components do what they say. (You can just put Research Lab component on Starbases iirc, etc.)

Here are my notes from how I mod it. It definitely doesn't require modding, I just want to help and you should just see what vanilla is first! I am not a pro, I have barely played past the starting phase in any game.
Download Distant Worlds Extended 1.0.3 with Das Chrome UI 1.5b mod Blue from http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3141149
Next is Darkspire's "DarkMap". Only do the galaxy map replace, as we still want visible nebulas! http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3450380
The DarkMap basically has black space instead of cosmetic stars, which I prefer over having the conflict of distinguishing functional star systems over cosmetic (I can't remember how big a deal this is, again boot up some vanilla!)

Lastly for personal taste or trivial: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3050750 , and then I have notes on mixing around the race images and help entries so that I get my preferred blend of things, such as keeping most of the original race images (not having the Extended mod's versions replace them).
Post edited December 05, 2017 by Charles.Surge
This looks like the most interesting of Slitherine's releases of today. Still too deep and lengthy for me to play right now, but i'll park this in my wishlist for future shopping. As for the base price being high, i can think of several games with a similar price but not similar content or quality. :)
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piccolo255: EDIT: this large of a discount is quite rare for this game, on Steam I've seen it go over 50% only once or twice.
I am practically sure that I have seen DW:U with a similar discount... maybe in Steam, maybe in BundleStars (now Fanatical :P)
It's such a great time to be an obese PC gamer, i'm so happy to stay home and even at work with my drm free gog games i can eat and play everywhere i wish! :D

System requirements
Additional Notes: Requires Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer
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immi101: what?
not sure I can support that in good conscience :p
Seriously, I'd be very interested to know why a game would require the presence or use of either of these (or any web browser or media player software, for that matter).
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piccolo255: DW:U ($53.29) is a full pack, which includes the base game and 3 expansions (full expansions, not nickel-and-dime DLCs), plus a few updates. You should be comparing it not to, say, GalCiv3 ($26.43) but to GalCiv3 + all DLCs (currently $85.93, will likely rise in the future).
Poor Brad Wardell . :p

edit : mod list

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3668624
Post edited December 05, 2017 by Painted_Doll
Thank God they added another strategy sci-fi game to GOG's roster. It's such a rare genre...
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immi101: what?
not sure I can support that in good conscience :p
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HunchBluntley: Seriously, I'd be very interested to know why a game would require the presence or use of either of these (or any web browser or media player software, for that matter).
I was on the way to buy the game until I saw that "requirement".
Nope,I cannot support this kind of thing,sorry...
Finally its here. And also these are also Slitherine releases which means that gog finally broke the ice with the publisher. Hopefully we will see Ageod and Matrix games coming to gog soon.

As for Distant Worlds. Its a must for any serious 4x gamer.
Great to finally see some Slitherine games here and hopefully we will see many more in the near future.
I played the "Gold Version" meaning base game and first expansion of Distant Worlds a while ago and found it rather repetitive and lacking in flavour (also very unpolished for a gold verson). Did further expansions shake up the gameplay much?
Wow, big surprise to see this pop up. I may have to add yet another game to the backlog...
I splooshed when I saw the Matrix Games logo pop up in the trailer. Seriously hope this is the first of many.

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Trying to find out why Media Player and IE are required. No confirmation but it kinda-sorta looks like the Galactopedia (encyclopedia for the game) might use IE? Something like that? WMP might also be tied in to that, for short clips.

My best guess based on hitting up the forum at MatrixGames, but what I read doesn't confirm that.
high rated
Thanks for the support guys.

Distant Worlds was started many years ago and some decisions early on tied the engine to IE and WMP. With hindsight these are not great decisions but at the time it didn't seem to be an issue. The game just needs the components installed, it does not need to be your default browser.

The team are working on a sequel and this doesn't have any of those requirements so please don't pass on the game just because of this!

Thanks for your understanding.

Iain McNeil
Development Director
Slitherine & Matrix Games
This one has space lanes too :-( Hmmm... I suspect not quite my cup of space fuel.

Cool looking game though.
Post edited December 05, 2017 by Themken