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Distant Worlds 2
Asid:
Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi - Dev Log #1
Wed, 11 September 2024
The Rise of the Shakturi
Hello everyone. This is the first of three Developer Blogs we’ll be doing in the lead up to the release of Return of the Shakturi, the first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2. This initial blog will focus on the Shakturi crisis, Planet Destroyers, and Mega Ships. Please note that you will have a choice of whether you want to play with the Shakturi crisis or not and the ability to adjust when the crisis begins to suit your challenge level.
The second and third blogs will go into detail on additional features and improvements that this expansion brings to the base game, including those that will be available as part of a free update for all Distant Worlds 2 players and those that are available even if you are not playing through the actual Shakturi crisis.
As most Distant Worlds players know, the Shakturi are an ancient and terrible threat which was responsible for the last cataclysmic galactic war, the scars and remains of which are visible throughout the current galaxy. The story to date through the base game and the faction DLCs has given various clues about the Shakturi. You’ve seen places of gravitic instability and ancient closed wormholes, bits and pieces of old communication logs detailing a massive conflict, mind-affecting viruses, and some remaining “vaults” set up by artificial intelligences called the Ancient Guardians to preserve knowledge from that previous era. Along with all that, for those who searched well enough, there was even a single ancient but non-functioning Mortalen planet destroyer.
With Return of the Shakturi, you now get to experience what a proper endgame crisis in Distant Worlds 2 is like and what fighting against (or with) a major endgame threat like the Shakturi means for your empire.
The crisis begins with a gradual build-up, which can be seen in the livestream preview we did, but once the Shakturi arrive, it becomes evident fairly quickly that they have some knowledge and abilities that are beyond other empires. The Shakturi have mastered certain areas of research that appear for the first time in this expansion – namely Psychic, Genetic Engineering and Biowarfare. We’ll go through each of these in detail below.
Their powerful Psychic abilities allow the Shakturi to enhance their diplomacy, espionage, counter-espionage, space and ground combat. They can take over characters and even in the worst case take over the leader of an empire, at a minimum causing chaos but for some empires like Hive Minds, potentially even vassalizing that empire. In space combat, the Shakturi can incapacitate the crews of your ships, or even cause them to hallucinate and fire on their own allies. In ground combat, your divisions can be disabled or even caused to temporarily defect to the Shakturi side.
All of these are limited by the psychic energy generated by the Shakturi in the galaxy. In other words, the more Shakturi there are, the more frequent and more powerful their capabilities will be. You will need to start from the beginning, understanding what psychic energy is, how to disrupt it and how to defend against it in all of those areas. There is a large defensive Psychic research tree for you to unlock to help level the field against the Shakturi.
The Shakturi have also long been focused on “perfecting” their own forms and abilities and experiment relentlessly with Genetic Engineering to create better servants for themselves. You can follow their lead and research ways to improve your own species, to make your empire, ships and ground troops more powerful. The Shakturi are also busy creating and manufacturing new space creatures to unleash against you as well as influencing those that already exist to become hostile against all that are not in the Shaktur Axis. If you want to be able to better counter the Shakturi influence over these creatures, this is where you should focus your research.
Biowarfare gives the Shakturi the ability to design and unleash plagues of various kinds to weaken and prepare other factions for conquest, including making them more susceptible to Psychic influence and control. This area of research will allow you to cure those plagues, saving many millions of your empire’s population and making them a harder target for the Shakturi. You may also be able to design and deploy some plagues of your own, specifically targeted against the Shakturi. Take care though as Biowarfare often leads to unintended consequences.
The Shakturi endgame crisis progresses through various stages, culminating with a massive Alliance vs. Alliance war between the Shaktur Axis and the Freedom Alliance for control of the galaxy. Depending on your choices, you may end up helping the Freedom Alliance, the Shakturi Axis or trying to stay neutral (or fighting against both!). Good luck!
To make that final war more epic, Return of the Shakturi also comes packed with Planet Destroyers and Mega Ships. Each faction in the game, including those added post-release (with the exception of the Ikkuro, they’ll get something special post-release), will now have access to a special Mega Ship. Most of them act as Planet Destroyers and since the Shakturi will bring their own Planet Destroyers, it’s good to have an equivalent counter if you need it. Some are different though and I’ll review those below. These mega ships will also now be available separate from that endgame crisis in normal gameplay, as long as you have the Return of the Shakturi expansion.
Humans: Planet Destroyer with a Super Mass Driver weapon
Ackdarians: Planet Destroyer with a Super Beam weapon
Mortalen: Planet Destroyer with a Super Mass Driver weapon
Haakonish: Mega Ship with a Massive Gravitic Pulse weapon
Teekan: Mega Ship with a Massive Ion Bomb weapon
Boskara: Planet Destroyer with a Super Firestorm Torpedo weapon
Zenox: Stealthy Mega Ship with Super Long Range Sensors (a mobile Stealth Mega Monitoring Station which can fight)
Dhayut: Planet Destroyer with a Super Beam weapon
Quameno: Mega Ship with a Mobile Robotic Troop Foundry
Gizurean: Planet Destroyer with a Super Beam weapon
In the next blog, we’ll talk more about Outposts, the new multi-Empire Alliances and the space-based start option for your civilization, which are additional new features included in this expansion.
Wish list now:
Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/
Asid:
Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi - Dev Log #2
Fri, 27 September 2024
Expanding Horizons
Refugees, Outposts and Alliances
Hello everyone. This is the second of three Developer Blogs we’ll be doing in the lead up to the release of Return of the Shakturi, the first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2.
In the first one, we focused on the Shakturi story and their unique abilities as well as the Mega Ships and Planet Destroyers. In this one, we’ll focus on some of the additional unique new features which are part of the Return of the Shakturi expansion, specifically Outposts, multi-Empire Alliances and the Refugee start option.
The third and final blog will cover some additional features and improvements that are coming as part of the work on Return of the Shakturi, but which will be released as part of a free update for all Distant Worlds 2 owners, along with the Return of the Shakturi release.
With Return of the Shakturi, you now get to experience what a proper endgame crisis in Distant Worlds 2 is like and what fighting against (or with) a major endgame threat like the Shakturi means for your empire.
Outposts are smaller than colonies with a maximum of 50 million of your empire’s citizens. in exchange for this, they can be built on planets where you would not normally be able to put a colony, in other words very challenging and hostile environments. Outposts will not grow, though if they lose population for whatever reason, they can accept new migrants up to their maximum population. Outposts also don’t provide income – instead, they require funds from your empire to maintain the various life support systems that allow for survival on such harsh worlds. The support cost of an Outpost increases as its planet’s suitability decreases.
What are they good for then?
[*] Outposts allow you to claim territory in a way that stations do not. Where you have an outposts, your empire’s borders will extend to cover it.
[*] Outposts allow you to extend your colonization range to get to more suitable worlds that might otherwise be out of reach.
[*] Outpost give your empire full benefits from any empire bonuses or unique resources found on their planet, which can give access to previously inaccessible ruin bonuses.
[*] Outposts allow you to build Terraforming Facilities. This means that with Outposts, you can potentially bring a previously uncolonizable planet up to colony level. Note however that worlds with very low base suitability now require a Terraforming Facility to remain on the planet in order to maintain the suitability improvements, but sometimes you just need some extra real estate.
[*] Outposts can be converted to colonies if their suitability is high enough, for a modest cost.
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Return of the Shakturi includes a new multi-empire Alliance system. During the Shakturi endgame crisis and story, this allows for the formation of the Shaktur Axis and the Freedom Alliance during that crisis to fight against each other in a war to the finish. However, if you choose to turn off the Shakturi crisis, you’ll still get access to the Alliance system (in fact, much earlier as it won’t be gated behind the story events).
Alliances allow you to form a closer union with other empires. Once Allied, you are guaranteed a certain baseline set of treaties and all wars become Alliance wars. If someone attacks you, your Allies will join in your defense, but you can also Convene the Alliance to vote on declaring a combined war on another empire or to end an existing war. While your empire is in an Alliance, there is no separate peace possible.
When you Convene your Alliance, you can also vote to Admit or Expel a member. Note that the most powerful Alliance members will have more votes, but Admittance requires unanimity. Joining or leaving an Alliance is a big choice, but surviving the galaxy without an Alliance can be a challenge as well!
Now let’s discuss the Refugee Start.
Many have asked for a space-based beginning to a civilization, with a single colony ship and a small fleet with which to find a new home. This “Refugee Fleet” start option will now be possible for those players who want a greater challenge. You will have a choice of fleet size and starting tech level and once you found a new homeworld, you will be able to switch to a regular government type for your faction.
When this start begins, you are fleeing a recent disaster which struck your homeworld and you are in a fairly dangerous part of the galaxy. The population on your colony ship and passenger ships are all that remains of your people. You will need to protect them at all costs against the many dangers on the way while trying to find a new home. If you explore well enough, you may find more than just a new home!
Note that this start is best for experienced players who don’t mind difficult challenges or relying on manual play to get around problems.
In the next blog, we’ll talk about the many new features and improvements coming to the next official free update, thanks to the work on Return of the Shakturi. Those includes better fleet attack coordination, an upgraded Enemy Targets list with multiple fleet mission types per target, improved AI use of all fleet mission types, a new wartime mission system (with unique Shakturi missions when playing through the Return of the Shakturi), new intelligence missions (Destroy Facility, Deploy Plague (Shakturi only), Capture Character), rebalanced colonization and economy systems and improved message and notification management.
Asid:
Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi is out now
Mon, 28 October 2024
NEW EXPANSION AND ?STRATEGY? UPDATE ARE OUT NOW
Welcome back explorers, an ancient evil is returned to the vast universe of Distant Worlds 2. The wait is over. The Return of the Shakturi, the third DLC and first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2, is now available.
Also, don't miss the game showcase with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, following the release of The Return of the Shakturi.
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/
Asid:
Distant Worlds 2: how much has it improved over the last 24 months
Tue, 5 November 2024
The ongoing and continuous support for Distant Worlds 2 reflects the passion and commitment of Slitherine and CodeForce to support the fans who believed in this galactic project from day one.
On October 24th, Slitherine and CodeForce launched Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi, marking the debut of the first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2.
This release has been met with an overwhelmingly positive reception, reflecting the community's enthusiasm and excitement. On day one it had 100% of positive reviews, within a week, reviews have remained consistently high, up to 88%, and the ratings for the base game have risen to 76%.
Since the base game was released, performance and compatibility have improved thanks to numerous multi-threading optimizations, and both Artificial Intelligence and User Interface have progressed significantly. Slitherine released two Faction DLCs introducing the Ikkuro, Dhayut, Gizureans and Quameno. Also, the Return of the Shakturi expansion brings an Endgame Crisis storyline with a very dangerous new enemy along with Outposts, multi-empire Alliances and several new research areas.
In addition to the content from the three DLCs released so far, if a player who purchased Distant Worlds 2 on day one in March 2022 were to reinstall the game today, they would discover numerous new features and updates. We asked our developers at CodeForce to summarize them below:
? Much better economic, sustainability, and terraforming balance and scaling through the mid- and late-game.
? Greatly expanded and enhanced Hive mid-game threat, as well as improved Pirates in the early game.
? New repeatable, top-tier research projects to extend gameplay.
? Massively improved performance and compatibility.
? Major improvements to AI - including more detailed AI policies and improved automation and behavior for most areas of the game, especially fleets, ships, economic management, colonization, research, ship design, population management and diplomacy.
? Major User Interface improvements, ranging from new camera modes, map overlays and message centers (with far more message filters) to distance measurement tools, additional list multi-select capabilities, more hotkeys, a greatly improved Enemy Targets list, better text formatting for all messages, additional filters on various empire tabs, more tooltips guidance and better UI scaling.
? Expanded modding, including Steam Workshop support and an in-game Mod Manager, greatly improved mod loading and priority/conflict management.
? Improved per-Hull Ship Design with new Component Policies for ship design automation guidance, defined upgrade paths for each Ship Design and improved Fleet Templates to include per hull fleet definitions and more fleet management options.
? Much better Economic, Suitability and Terraforming balance and scaling through the mid and late games, including many improvements to resource logistics and private sector operations.
? Two faction refreshes for base game factions (Humans and Mortalen) to bring their gameplay up to the level of the DLC factions, with more on the way until all base game factions are updated (Zenox and Boskara are next)!
? Greatly expanded and improved Hive mid-game threat as well as improving Pirates in the early game, including adding a Pirate Cruiser!
? New Repeatable top tier Research Projects for continuing gameplay alongside other improvements, adjustments and rebalances to most of the research tree.
As noted by the prestigious Softpedia, the strength of Distant Worlds 2 lies in the ability to forge a vast intergalactic empire, giving the player the freedom to choose what aspects of their empire to control: ?The game remains impressive when it comes to how much it simulates and how good it is at surfacing information while giving players ways to only deal with mechanics they care about?.
We?re thrilled by the warm reception of the expansion from fans, with thousands of visits to the Steam page and content creators from across the gaming world. Here are a few multilingual examples of how some of the top Twitch and YouTube creators in the strategy games niche have enjoyed Distant Worlds 2 and the new DLC.
Asid:
State of the Game and Roadmap 2025
February 04, 2025
Hello and Happy New Year to everyone in the Distant Worlds 2 community.
As before, Elliot and I would like to thank our players for their patience and support since Distant Worlds 2 was released. 2023 saw our first two expansions for Distant Worlds 2 along with four Major updates (Aurora, Hyperspeed, Discovery and Fleet).
We continued improving DW2 with the Stellar, Game Faction and Maintenance updates in 2024, along with the release of our first feature expansion, Return of the Shakturi. Thus in 2024 customers received faction refreshes and many, many game improvements and fixes for free along with the one big Shakturi expansion.
We hope you have been enjoying Return of the Shakturi and we?re excited to share with you what?s coming next for Distant Worlds 2.
The Current State of the Game
We?ve continued to put a large part of our effort into ongoing free updates for the DW2 community to keep improving the game, rather than just focusing on DLC content or locking everything behind expansions. As a result, the base game is much improved and continuing to improve over time. We continue to improve almost all gameplay areas as well as the AI, which saw major improvements as part of the work on Return of the Shakturi and would run circles around the empire AI at release.
There has been a lot of positive feedback about our free base faction refreshes and I?m glad to say that these will continue, with the next two just around the corner. We have the Boskara and the Zenox due to be refreshed in the next official update by the end of Q1 2025, which includes some texture fixes for the Boskara ships and stations and a major overhaul of the look of the Zenox ships and stations. The Teekans and Haakonish should follow by the end of 2025, leaving the Ackdarians as the final base game faction to refresh, likely next year.
Return of the Shakturi took a great deal of our time, but we think the results were worth the effort. As a result of that, we are already planning our next Feature Expansion while we finish the upcoming Atuuk and Wekkarus DLC, which we expect to officially announce soon. Both of these factions have some very unique gameplay which we think you will enjoy and they also have some unique lore and gameplay that interacts with the Return of the Shakturi expansion.
While we are a very small team, we are committed to both expanding the game with new DLCs and expansions but also continuing to update and improve the base game through our ongoing free updates. We want to make sure everyone who purchased DW2 can enjoy it to its fullest on their system and for their playstyle.
Roadmap 2025
We are happy to share our journey with you, along with the roadmap outlining the next steps for this year.
Our next areas to focus on:
1.Update the base factions in the game, one by one, to a similar level as the recently released DLCs when it comes to faction and government gameplay differentiation. Completed for the Humans and Mortalen, Boskara and Zenox are almost finished. Teekan and Haakonish should follow late this year and the Ackdarians are last in line, probably in 2026 to complete the base faction refresh.
2.Continuing improvements on fleet and ship behavior. There have been major improvements and fixes for the fleet and ship AI as part of the Return of the Shakturi, which was in the base game updates, though it always seems that there?s another corner case or two to address. We still plan to also add more guidance for fleet and ship tactical settings as well as more detail in the galactopedia to help players understand how to use their fleets.
3.Further improvements to pathing issues as well as pathfinding performance. We made some significant improvements here during 2024 and the more recent reports suggest that pathfinding issues are far less frequent now, but some remain especially when starting a path from deep space and near nebulas. Additional improvements are planned after the next official update.
4.Improve the AI further. As part of the Return of the Shakturi work, we greatly improved the AI in many areas including economic management and diplomatic/military strategy. As always, there?s more that can be done. We still need to improve the population policy side, specific to slavery but also other policies. We plan to revisit the design of these in the future and also improve the AI?s management of population policies.
5.Improve quality of life for manual players further. We have just added support for queued orders in the first public beta update for 2025. We?ve also added a map search function to the exploration menu along with a few other features to help with manual exploration. We have a list of additional improvements for manual play which we will be working through as the year progresses.
6.Improve message handling and awareness further. We added a new much more detailed message filtering system with separate message centers in 2024, including a new combat overlay to help with spotting battle activity during wars and a separate message center for advisor messages. We are still working to add the ability to tell an advisor ?do not suggest this again? or to tell a Pirate or an Empire ?do not contact me again with this offer? to help further reduce message spam.
7.Adding a Galactopedia and Galaxy map Search function. We now have a galaxy map search aand a distance measurement tool. The Galactopedia search will be coming in an update this year.
8.Modding support will continue to be a priority. We?ve expanded this greatly since release, including the addition of an in-game mod manager, Steam Workshop support and much better handling of multiple mods. We also recently added support for code modding and deobfuscated more methods to better support localization mods for more complex languages.
9.There are also other reported issues beyond those above which we will also address as we go forward, this is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are our current highest priority goals. We have been compiling master lists of all issue reports by category and as our time allows, we work our way through these areas to make sure we continue to improve the player experience with DW2.
Future Expansions
As always, the Content and Art teams are not heavily involved in most of the game fixes we?ve been working through, so they have been spending most of their time working on future releases.
Our first priority is the Atuuk and Wekkarus DLC, which will release in early Q2 2025. Stay tuned for our official announcement in Q1 which will reveal the exact release date and more details about these new factions. Each of them has unique new gameplay features and interesting lore that ties into the DW2 and Shakturi storylines.
The Wekkarus are among the most ancient and mysterious aliens in DW2 with possible connections to the Shakturi. The Atuuk are space lemmings of a sort who were just barely smart enough to figure out FTL. This DLC will work fine whether you have ?Return of the Shakturi? or not, but will have some additional features/content related to that expansion if you have it. If you don?t like what the Shakturi psychic abilities can do to you when they show up, you will probably love playing as the Atuuk, who are almost entirely resistant to psychic effects.
We are also in the planning stages for the next feature expansion and I can tease that it will at last bring playable Pirates to DW2. We won?t be announcing that officially until much later this year as we are still working through the design. We expect it to be a 2025 release.
Work has also begun on the fourth "Factions" DLC. All we can say about that now is that it includes the Securans and the Naxxilians and will likely release in 2026.
Update Schedule
It will generally take 6-12 weeks of public beta updates to get to an update that is stable enough to become official. For 2025, we expect to release public beta updates roughly every two weeks and new free official updates every 3 months or so, though there may be a slow down in that schedule once the Pirate expansion work gets into high gear.
Our Thanks
Thank you again if you took the time to read all of this and for your support of Distant Worlds 2. Please check in regularly going forward and try the newest beta updates if you?d like to see how things are shaping up.
Please stay tuned for more information on Atuuk and Wekkarus DLC in Q1 and more on the Pirate Expansion and future DLCs later this year.
Sincerely,
Erik Rutins and Elliot Gibbs
Matrix Games and CodeForce
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