r/DistantWorlds • u/Morticus_Mortem • Sep 03 '26
DWU/DW1 This might be a stupid question but do colonies actually consume resources?
I've admittedly never seen if they do. Just curious.
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u/OzoneGrif Sep 03 '26
Yes they do...
Resource fit into three general categories:
- Fuel, which is needed for all your space reactors and hyperdrives to function at peak efficiency (in other words, fuel is essential to just about everything in your space-faring economy)
- Construction Resources, which are required for your worlds to grow (they consume a variety of these on a regular basis), as well as to build or upgrade new ships, facilities and stations. Without these, nothing new really gets build and colony growth can be significantly slowed.
- Luxury Resources, which are required for your worlds to develop, though they also can offer other significant bonuses depending on the specific resource. Some of these are quite rare, or even unique and they come with much higher bonuses. Development is the difference between a relatively primitive frontier world eking out an existence with just enough technology to survive and a thriving core world which represents the pinnacle of your space civilization. Your population alone will increase development, but luxury resources help a great deal more.
Source: https://www.matrixgames.com/news/distant-worlds-2-dev-diary-6
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u/Morticus_Mortem Sep 03 '26
Wrong game.
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u/Shake-Vivid Sep 03 '26
The same applies to DWU as far as I'm aware
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u/OzoneGrif Sep 03 '26
Yes, it's the same for the first opus. The only difference is Luxury resources do not have additional bonuses. They only have a fixed development bonus.
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u/Noneerror Sep 03 '26
Colonies consume Luxuries (very small amounts) and anything used by the construction yards and docking ships. That's it. Most colonies also cost money rather than generate it.
Any ports/bases in orbit share resources with the colony. So anything used at the ports also is consumed like upgrading them. If ports/bases have an energy deficit they will consume fuel, and every refueling ship will take fuel from the colony. The colony itself consumes no fuel or other strategic resources.
What makes colonies appear to use resources is shipping. Other nations will buy resources and often get them from your colony. Also the game tries to balance your resources across all of your "ports" (specifically that word).
Resources get divided across each colony if they have a port in orbit. IE if you have 3 colonies each with a port then the game will generate shipping orders so they each have 33%. This is bad. It causes all sorts of problems. However you don't have to have a port at every colony, nor should you. Instead build "bases" or "research stations" around colonies. Only capitals should have a "port".
And yes, this is for DWU/DW1
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u/Morticus_Mortem Sep 03 '26
I see. I was wondering if the colonies would just passively consume all kinds of resources, not related to the ones being used for construction. I asked because if colonies don't have enough resources, their development will slow. It's strange that they require resources that they won't even use beyond construction.
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u/Noneerror Sep 03 '26
Kinda. Keep in mind "development" in-game is about the society on that planet. Not money.
The people on the planet have to have access to a resource. Which makes sense IMO that it is a binary check. For example in the real world, Earth has zinc however it is used. It is not used up. It's still an element of the same mass on Earth. The only time the total mass of zinc decreases is if it is used in a spacecraft that removes it from Earth. Which is similar to how resource usage is handled by the game.
Now imagine if Earth had no zinc at all. It would negatively impact society. This seems like a joke. But there are real world equivalents. For example there's less than 50 kilograms of tritium (fusion fuel) world wide. If Earth had enough then it would drastically change the development of society.
How would humanity have developed if we had access to Nekros Stone?
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u/Turevaryar Obsessed to the Extreme Sep 03 '26
They should consume luxury resources, yes.
In fact, it's the whole point.
I am quite sure this is one of the reasons why your profit can fluctuate.