Dogs Of War Vu
Sim/Strategy/War => Games Discussion => Topic started by: Asid on December 20, 2019, 11:08:24 PM
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Distant Worlds 2 Sneak Peek #1 – Ship Design
20 Dec 2019
(https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%200%20x.jpg) (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%200.jpg)
A Teekan Spaceport in orbit around a planet
We’ve been working on Distant Worlds 2 for more than four years now and we thought it was time to start giving you a few peeks behind the curtain. There is much more we’ll be showing over the coming months, but we’ll give you a first look today.
Please note that the screenshots included here are not from a final, polished release build so will in places include some unfinished areas and missing or placeholder art. There is much that is still subject to change between our current development build and the release.
In general, our goal for Distant Worlds 2 was to make a better Distant Worlds 1, with a new and modern engine. That is a pretty tall order given that by the time we got to the final Distant Worlds: Universe release, about nine years of development and design had gone into Distant Worlds 1.
Distant Worlds 2 is based on an entirely new 64-bit, multi-core capable 3D engine which provides us better performance and the ability to create even larger galaxies with more to explore, more stories to tell and even larger battles. In addition, it allows us to support a fully scalable interface.
(https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%201%20x.jpg) (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%201.jpg)
A Mortalen Spaceport with component slot markers turned on
For this first peek, we’d like to speak briefly about Ship Design. In this screenshot, you can see the ship design interface and a view of a Mortalen Spaceport.
In Distant Worlds 1, ships were two dimensional units basically defined by their size. Size determined how much could fit in a ship. Each component that could fit in a ship had a size and while you needed some minimum components to get a ship to work, beyond that you could put in whatever you wanted, as long as you stayed within the maximum size. Your size was also essentially your bag of hit points and any damage that wasn’t soaked up by your shields or your armor started destroying components.
In Distant Worlds 2, ships are a bit more interesting.
(https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%202%20x.jpg) (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%202.jpg)
A Mortalen Spaceport with component slot markers turned off
For one thing, they are now three dimensional models. For another, ships now have a hull, which has its own armor rating and ability to take damage, as well as additional space that can fit components.
That additional space is divided into slots, which are organized by the broad component category they are intended to fit. When a ship takes a hit, assuming it gets past the shields (which now can allow some damage to “leak” through, but also can have some base resistance against small shots, similar to the reactive rating for armor) and the armor, it may hit the hull or it may hit a component.
If your hull is too badly damaged, your ship will be destroyed. If you lose the wrong components, you could also be effectively dead in space, but not necessarily destroyed.
When you are deciding how to build a ship now, you first research a hull, which defines the hull armor, hull size and the size and number of components it can fit.
(https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%203%20x.jpg) (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%203.jpg)
This is a shot of an Ackdarian Construction Ship
Some of these component slots are external (for example, all the weapons and engine, the hangar, some of the defenses). In the case of an external slot, adding a component there is actually reflected on the 3D model of the ship. A ship with four weapons will have four visible weapons, whereas a ship with one will only have one. A ship that has filled out all its possible engine slots to be as fast as possible will visible have more engines, and so on.
In many cases, this means that you can see significant differences in the ship model based on the design style chosen for a particular ship. It’s worth noting that you almost never have enough available space in the hull to fill every possible slot. As with Distant Worlds 1, you can choose to specialize a ship in one or a few areas, or to try to balance its capabilities across all areas.
Within the ship design interface, you can easily view the different categories of components, review the component slots in your selected hull and also see the visualization of the ship and the component slot locations in the center. The right side allows you to see a summary of your ship’s capabilities in a variety of areas.
There’s more to say about ship design, but that’s all we will cover for now. We’ll leave you with a few screenshots that show a bit more of the game.
(https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%204%20x.jpg) (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%204.jpg)
This is an Ackdarian Spaceport in orbit around an Ocean Planet
(https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%205%20x.jpg) (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%205.jpg)
This is view of the planet Sreloor 5 and its moons
(https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%206%20x.jpg) (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%206.jpg)
This is view of a red gas giant with a mining station in orbit
(https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%207%20x.jpg) (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Screenshots/DW2/Distant%20Worlds%20Sneak%20Peek%20Stream%207.jpg)
This is a peek at the main interface, still work in progress, but showing a system view in the center, various main interface dialogs in the top left, including the Military one which is open, the selection dialog in the bottom left with some information regarding the selected Mortalen Destroyer, a summary of the planets, ships and stations in the system being viewed in the bottom center, map overlay toggles in the bottom right and victory, settings, message and speed controls in the top right.
We appreciate your interest in Distant Worlds 2 and we hope you enjoyed this preview of Ship Design!
Stay tuned for further information
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Distant Worlds 2 - Showcase
21 Jan 2021
(https://multiplayer.net-cdn.it/thumbs/images/2021/01/21/distant-worlds-2_jpg_750x400_crop_upscale_q85.jpg)
Live stream on Tuesday, January 26th on Slitherine Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/slitherinegroup) for a showcase entirely dedicated to Distant Worlds 2.
We will be sharing with you the latest news and showing you the first gameplay videos of the game.
So don't make plans for that day, Distant Worlds 2 isn't that "distant" anymore.
See the reveal teaser
https://youtu.be/xtyQO1bKiZs
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Distant Worlds 2 || Ackdarians Trailer
Jan 26, 2021
https://youtu.be/Nk10UreDdRg
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Distant Worlds 2 Gameplay Reveal
26 jan 2021
https://youtu.be/15t2XoIf5eg
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Distant Worlds 2 - Dev Diary #1
Tue, 6 July 2021
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Welcome dear reader and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2 (http://www.matrixgames.com/game/distant-worlds-2). This is the first of several Developer Diaries that we’ll be releasing roughly every two weeks from now until release to cover different parts of Distant Worlds 2 in some additional detail.
First, let me introduce who we are. As you may be aware, Distant Worlds 2 has a fairly small development team, though it has grown since Distant Worlds: Universe. The two core team members are Elliot Gibbs who is the one and only programmer and designer and Erik Rutins (that’s me) who is the producer and co-designer. There are many additional and crucial team members who we work with every week: a “Supertester” and expert XML data wrangler and tools developer, several incredibly creative and dedicated 3D, 2D and UI artists who provide us with our models, characters, animations, effects, illustrations, interface elements and concept art, and a very talented music composer. We have also been blessed to have the assistance of many dedicated and remarkably talented Distant Worlds volunteer testers and fans who have helped us in very important ways throughout Alpha and Beta testing with their feedback and suggestions. Any acclaim should deservedly go to the whole team as Distant Worlds 2 has been a real team effort.
This initial diary will discuss a few of our key goals when we finished support on Distant Worlds: Universe and decided that making a new Distant Worlds game was what we wanted to do.
The pre-cursor to Distant Worlds 2, Distant Worlds: Universe is a very successful Sci-Fi 4x game, which while strongly influenced by many 4x and strategy games that came before it, also added some new innovations to the genre. Some of the main innovations were the seamless “living galaxy” feel of the game, the very flexible automation and advisor settings that allowed you to tailor the game to your preferred playstyle, and the remarkable depth which allowed you to dive into your preferred gameplay areas with significantly less abstraction that many games allow. The end result was a great deal of positive acclaim from players that focused on these innovations and the overall gameplay, while most of the negative feedback was related to the limitations of the underlying engine, including memory usage, performance, graphical quality and interface scaling.
Distant Worlds: Universe was unfortunately built on a 32-bit Windows engine with some very real limitations in what could be done in many of these problem areas while maintaining adequate performance within the scope of an always active “living galaxy”. We were bumping up against these limits ourselves from the initial release and they became increasingly more difficult to deal with over time.
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By the time we released Distant Worlds: Universe, we knew that any future game would need a new engine that would not only allow us to make Distant Worlds look better, but would also allow it to perform better and expand what we could do in terms of gameplay choices. Elliot spent a good deal of time researching this and in fact one year into the project we even went through the pain of switching engines, just to make sure we would be able to achieve all of our engine-related goals. Distant Worlds 2 is now based on the Stride engine, is fully 64-bit and 3D and with a full dynamic scaling for all elements, including the interface. I can’t overstate how much work and time it required of the entire team to make this leap, but we strongly feel the end result will be worthwhile and will allow us to continue to develop for Distant Worlds 2 for many years to come.
The second main goal relates to the interface. In making the big jump to a new and modern engine, we knew we could address dynamic scalability, but there were also many comments from Distant Worlds: Universe players about the original interface being difficult to learn. While it was quite functional once you learned it, the initial learning curve was harder than it should have been and partly because it evolved over multiple releases, the organization of information in some cases made things quite difficult for players to find.
A significant effort was put into a re-design of the interface, focused on providing players with easy top-level access to the most significant information both for better awareness and quicker decision-making. The bottom-left area remains focused on information about whatever the player has selected, but the selection menus and buttons themselves have been reorganized as well as additional information added where it previously required diving into other menus or dialogs. The bottom-middle now has a dynamic summary when in the system level of all significant “objects’ within the player’s current location or view.
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/f4746a95860b6b29a75bdc1e64d9584e523e1432.png)
The top-left now has a series of major “headings” (in order from left to right, Empire Summary, Diplomacy, Colonies, Exploration, Resources, Construction, Research, Military and Civilian). When the player hovers the mouse over any of these, a summary of key metric in that area is shown. Moving the mouse down to the summary expands the menu further, allowing any of a series of sub-menus to be chosen that provide more information or detail. Moving the mouse off this area, collapses them back to the top, but clicking anywhere in these menus “locks” them open for ongoing interaction. Another click on the top “unlocks” them.
The top-right has a few basic piece of summary information – your current research projects, number of colonies and population, surplus income and cashflow and game date and speed. Clicking any of these also jumps to the relevant dialog to manage them in more detail. Below the speed controls are the victory conditions, game options and the message log.
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/21abe4d6b512d328c2971e70aadff36814380725.png)
The Message Log has had fillters added and can be opened at any time to review old messages. Current messages appear on the right hand side below the log. When they first appear, they are briefly expanded at first to allow the player at a glance to get a sense of what they are about, then they collapse back to a smaller color-coded message category icon. Depending on the player’s chosen options, these many include advisor messages as well as other notifications or warnings. If ignored, the vast majority “auto-expire” after a delay (a small line under the message icon shrinks as the message expires) and go to the message log. Hovering the mouse over a message allows a quick glance at its expanded form. A single left-click on the message will open and lock it so that any actions related to it may be decided on. A double left-click will go to the message location. A single right-click will immediately dismiss the message.
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/1889201383a42772b310de2c81a81d0bdbb0a889.png)
A third goal was to make it easier for the player to gain information at a glance from the map. Part of this involved connecting up the User Interface to the map more directly. For example, when you have a dialog open on the top left and are reviewing your colonies, or exploration ships, or fleets, or even a filtered list of freighters currently transporting Hexodorium, the relevant items will also be highlighted on the map and will “ping” as you mouse over them so that you can more quickly and easily see where everything is. It also means that we added planetary and system “badges” which provide a summary of key assets, resources and capabilities at a given location. These have a planetary system version and a galacitc version depending on how zoomed in you are. There’s also additional information available when you mouse-over locations or objects.
In the view above, you can see that for the planet and moon on the right side of the system, I have found two ruins that are not yet fully explored. I also know of two available resources that could be mined and the exploration indicator in yellow is tellng me the current exploration level and that exploration there is not yet completed. The middle planetary group just has four resources. The middle left has a star showing that it’s our capitol planet, what its population is, what its happiness is, that it has the capability for construction (both due to the planet and the spaceport) and that it is a location that can refuel ships. Under that, it shows an explored ruin, the various explored resources and that we have 120 Troop Strength there.
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Finally, in order to allow you to play the game your way, we’ve added a lot of policy, automation and advisor settings and grouped them all together in one convenient location to allow you to automate the parts you don’t want to deal with, turn on two different levels of advisors for areas you’d like to supervise, or set areas to full manual control when you really want to dive in. This level of automation extends down from this top level to being able to automate or manually control planets, fleets and even individual state ships.
I hope this review of our goals in improving the engine and the user interface helped you see how far we’ve come from Distant Worlds: Universe. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a new Developer Diary for you all!
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Distant Worlds 2 - Dev Diary #2
Thur 5th Aug
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/20fde724f993d49b6bedc8dc8e1adb7ecde906b6.jpg)
Welcome to our second Developer Diary and thank you for your interest in [link=http://www.matrixgames.com/game/distant-worlds-2]Distant Worlds 2[/link].
We want to introduce this one with our brand new video about Mortalens
https://youtu.be/dhdCrjnfOSQ
This diary will discuss some of the “story” behind the galaxy of Distant Worlds 2, an interesting place for you to explore.
One of the best parts of Distant Worlds is that the galaxy is present in full detail and “alive”. There are always things going on almost everywhere you look. Much less is abstracted away than in many other 4x games, where you may only see the ships in your military fleets, or a system may be represented just by a star and a few major planets, or where the galaxy really is just star systems, points if you will, connected by lines that determine where you can go. In Distant Worlds 2, you have all of space, both the systems themselves and every bit of space within them, every planet, moon and asteroid, but also the space between systems, including nebulae, ion, radiation and gravitic storms. Exploration, travel, battles and everything else can happen anywhere within that space.
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/3632f8903e2be5efe22ef401447492cb838f6414.png)
We’ll get into some more of what exploration is like in a future diary, but in terms of story, this allows us a lot of room to work with to place all kinds of remnants of the “ancient galaxy” as well as unique characteristics and bonuses which separate one planet, moon, star or asteroid from another. You may find ancient ruins, fragments of data revealing previously unknown locations, abandoned or partially destroyed ships, the remains of ancient fleet battles, a unique planetary feature, and so on and so forth. All of this is present at the generation of the galaxy, but some things are much easier to find than others, some can only be found by the best explorers and some are much easier to find once you have the right clues to point you in the right direction. Each generated Distant Worlds 2 galaxy is a truly huge playground with a great many hidden discoveries waiting to be found.
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/100b6b2d2376bd04200fb3518ae76f6d5d3e21bf.png)
However, it’s not just these more static discoveries that await you in space. First of all, you have what we call “Pirates”, though their full story is much more complex than that brief description or what first impressions will likely suggest. They’ll challenge you initially, as they are used to having a monopoly on space. You’ll likely have to repel their raids and decide whether to focus on destroying them or accepting their terms to some degree in order to negotiate a peace. They do know more than you about the galaxy, if you’re willing to pay their price.
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There are also creatures of unusual size and origin that exist in space and travel between the stars. Their origins are for you to discover, but you will find them a significant obstacle to expansion in some systems and a navigational hazard in others.
Here we can make out a Gravillex in the distance which has just missed slicing open a fleeing Human Frigate with its energy beam weapon. These are remarkably aggressive creatures that did not exist in the “Ancient” galaxy, but are now found in significant numbers, often feeding on stars for their energy. The type of star they’ve been feeding on also has a significant effect on how dangerous a given Gravillex may be.
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/b4f149ae4bd3f9a5ac45db7859650209298c632e.png)
Here’s an Ardilus, normally a much more passive denizen of space that is usually found around gas giants. Beware though, as it is quite territorial if you come too close as this Mortalen Escort just discovered.
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There’s also the dreaded Vordikar, but it’s quite stealthy and the last three exploration ships we sent into the asteroids to find one for you never returned. I promise we’ll show you one in a future diary.
Beyond all this though, we have an expanded “Main Story” as well as a “Faction Story” for each of our playable factions (Humans, Ackdarians, Mortalen, Haakonish, Zenox, Boskara and Teekan). This is a major effort above and beyond anything that Distant Worlds: Universe had, involving the creation of a new story and event system which allows us to do much more than we could in the past, including event and story choices (and this is all also open to players and modders who wish to tinker and use the system for their own stories).
Each Faction in Distant Worlds 2 by default represents a certain playstyle. For example, the Mortalen are “Disciplined Warriors” which means that their faction story and faction victory conditions will tend to reinforce that playstyle and reward playing them in that way. While the Main Story will reveal some information about the Ancient galaxy and what happened in the past, each Faction Story will reveal more about the specific background and events that involved that faction, as well as giving the player a great chance to be the first to find some truly unique and rewarding locations. By playing through all the faction stories, the most complete account of the Ancient galaxy can be pieced together.
As an example, here’s a shot taken in “cheat mode” showing a small selection of some placed main and faction story events across a section of a generated galaxy, on top of the normal hidden bonuses, ruins and discoveries. Each of those little labels indicates either a single even or the initial trigger for an event chain. Of course, you won’t have this cheat view to guide you in your own galaxy, but if you explore well and boldly, you should have plenty of good stories to tell!
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/6631fbec0326ae425be77d67ed31347b404b9501.png)
As always, we want to let you play the game your way, so in the galaxy setup you can choose to enable or disable pirates, space creatures and the main and faction stories, as well as tailoring the amount and strength of pirates and space creatures. You can also disable faction victory conditions and change the government and play your chosen faction in a different way. We look at the galaxy as your sandbox and want to give you the tools to make sure it’s setup the way you would like it to be.
I hope this shed some light on the Distant Worlds 2 galaxy and what your own Distant Worlds story might be like. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a new Developer Diary for you all!
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Distant Worlds 2 - Dev Diary #3
Wed, 25 August 2021
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Procedural Rendering in Distant Worlds 2
Hello to all. My name is Elliot Gibbs, and I am the developer for Distant Worlds 2. This article has a slightly different focus. It
will give you a behind-the-scenes look at a small slice of the game with an important on-screen role: the natural environment of the Distant Worlds galaxy.
While this article is more technical, it will help you see “under-the-hood.” It will give you insight into how we solved some of the unique problems faced in a game as vast as Distant Worlds 2.
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Procedural Rendering versus Hand-made Art
What is procedural rendering? This refers to drawing various parts of the game without using hand-made art assets. In other words, an item is rendered on the screen without using any artist-created models or images. Instead the item is drawn using only software instructions – the item is rendered in code.
That might not sound very useful. Why would you bother writing a lot of software to draw something in code instead of just having an artist make a 3D model, or draw a 2D image?
That depends on what you are drawing and the number of different items that need to be drawn.
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/3ce893769c14a7e1ec797233361a0734b054db20.jpg)
The old way: the Galactic Environment in DW1
As you probably appreciate, in Distant Worlds there is a vast galactic environment, filled with many items to explore and discover: stars, planets, moons, black holes, nebula clouds, and many others.
In Distant Worlds 1 (Universe and earlier) these items were mostly hand-drawn 2D images: there were a set of images for desert planets, another set of images for ocean planets, a set of images for nebula clouds, etc. In total there were about 250 images for planets alone. So there was a lot of hand-drawn art!
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/9f8b4b7152d4034b3ba089741b3ff325ecfa7c42.jpg)
The advantage with static, hand-drawn art is that you can have very specific details in the art. For example you could have an image of the planet Earth in the game, complete with the continents, islands and oceans we know so well.
However there are some big drawbacks with static art:
• 2D images and textured models have a resolution limit that is constrained by memory, thus when zoomed in their appearance can become blurry or pixelated
• you typically need to draw each image or texture by hand, limiting how many variations you can realistically have. Although tools can help automate the generation of some images, you still have to store them and load them in game, which can take a lot of memory and storage
Procedural rendering is an alternative to making a lot of hand-drawn art. It means writing software that knows how to draw a particular item. We can then draw as many variations of this item as needed, tweaking parameters to make changes to its appearance.
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/89f2ed891430035131d49e8dbb4c235fc60bd202.jpg)
The new, better way in DW2
In Distant Worlds 2 nearly all of the galactic environment is procedurally rendered. That means that we use minimal hand-made art to draw the stars, planets, moons, black holes or nebula clouds in the game.
Instead there are a set of custom shader programs that know how to draw each of these items:
• a star shader that can draw brightly glowing coronas of semi-transparent gas and plasma
• several shaders that draw planets with solid surfaces: some with a lot of mountains, others with deep oceans, others with glowing lava lakes
• a shader that draws planets with gaseous surfaces with colored bands and swirling storms
• another shader draws black holes
• other shaders draw nebula clouds
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/c80a49188ffd5fb3498475e560b310b52f201c02.jpg)
How does it work?
At the core of these shaders is a concept called fractal noise. Fractal noise refers to a set of special random values that are tuned for drawing a natural environment in a realistic manner.
Fractal noise is a huge subject, which I won’t go into detail about here. But if you want to learn more you should look it up. You’ll see terms like Perlin noise and Simplex noise, which are good starting points.
But how do these procedural shaders work? What process do they follow, and what do they allow us to do?
• Firstly they use fractal noise to make a unique height map for each planet, allowing us to generate mountains, valleys, plains, coastlines and sub-oceanic terrain
• applies shadowing from sun light on the mountains and hills to provide subtle realism to the terrain
• if the planet is populated , adds city night lights that follow the natural geography of the planet, preferring low-lying and coastal areas (including underwater cities in shallow coastal regions)
• provides light-emitting features like lava lakes and oceans
• adds cloud layers with animated storm systems and shadows on the planet below
• allows latitude-specific features: polar ice caps, equatorial jungle belts, deserts
• allows altitude-specific terrain: snowy mountain tops, forested valleys, grassy plains and coastal areas, shallow underwater continental shelves, deep ocean basins
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/f57a610da1415ac37904b772e090e2f8ece1cfae.jpg)
Thus procedural shaders provide a vast improvement when rendering the natural environment in Distant Worlds, giving us an incredible level of detail and variety. The advantages of procedural rendering directly address the weaknesses of static art that we had in DW1:
• because the shader programs operate on each pixel on the screen, there is no resolution limit. You can keep zooming in closely to an item without blurriness or loss of quality
• by varying the input parameters for each shader you can obtain nearly infinite variety for an item, thus every planet in DW2 is unique
• because no static images or textures are needed, there is a dramatic reduction in memory and storage requirements
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/66f2279ea62ae29e1b9a3d0df1864c5b95d80090.jpg)
A Living, Animated Galaxy
Procedural rendering also enables another feature: animation. The fractal noise used in the shaders can be multi-dimensional, so you can use one of the dimensions to represent change over time. This allows you to smoothly animate things that you draw. For example, we have the following in Distant Worlds 2:
• cloud layers on planets that move and change
• star coronas with prominences that rise and fall
• gas giant planets with animated cloud surfaces
• nebula clouds that smoothly change over time
• black holes with swirling vortexes of light and energy
Thus procedural rendering helps to bring the galaxy of Distant Worlds to life, with motion and activity even in the natural environment. It gives infinite variety and depth of appearance to all of the planets and stars.
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Modding
You might be thinking: how does this affect modding? Can you easily mod new planet and star types into DW2? Or does this require special coding or shader skills?
The good news is that modders also have access to these same shaders to make their own unique planets and stars – no special skills are required. By simply adding a few values to a file you can have a completely new type of planet available in the game. Your planet will have all the same features as the built-in planet types: hyper-detailed height maps with shadowing, animated cloud layers, city night lights when populated, planetary rings, etc.
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So how does procedural rendering improve the galactic environment in Distant Worlds?
• provides infinite variety – no two planets in the galaxy are the same. They all have their own unique geographical features and coastlines
• eliminates blurriness or pixelation. Everything remains sharp and clear even when zoomed in close
• allows animation of features like star coronas, planetary clouds and nebula clouds
• uses a lot less memory, thus freeing up resources for other rendering
I hope you enjoyed this look at the galactic environment of Distant Worlds. I’ll be back later with more behind-the-scenes information about other features in Distant Worlds 2.
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Distant Worlds 2 - Dev Diary #4
Tue, 14 September 2021
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Galactic Terrain in Distant Worlds 2
Welcome to a new Distant Worlds 2 Dev Diary
.
Before we start, check out PCGamesN's interview
with the developers.
This article focuses on a problem common to all space strategy games: how do you get terrain or ‘geography’ into a galactic map?
We explore how other games have approached this problem, how Distant Worlds 1 handled things, and how Distant Worlds 2 has a ‘best of both worlds’ solution to allow free movement while having natural barriers to movement.
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Terrain in Strategy games
Most strategy games have a map. Many strategy games have a historical setting and thus their map has natural terrain like hills, mountains and oceans. These natural geographic features form barriers that define the shape of the map and how a player can travel across the map. So mountains and oceans can block travel or at least slow it down.
Space strategy games do not have such obvious natural terrain. Usually all of the game action occurs inside star systems, where planets are found. Space ships must travel between star systems, usually via some kind of hyperdrive or jumpdrive.
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To provide natural terrain in a space game, developers often employ arbitrary restrictions on travel. The classic example of this is the idea of ‘star-lanes’ where each star system has a limited number of paths to other nearby star systems. To reach a distant system the player usually has to traverse multiple intermediate systems. These ‘star-lanes’ thus form the geography of the map or galaxy, often entirely preventing any other route to a destination.
Star-lanes definitely add shape and terrain to the map. But many players dislike them because they are very artificial and contrived.
Inter-system travel in Distant Worlds 1
Distant Worlds 1 took a different approach to inter-system travel. In DW1 you could jump to any point on the map that was within fuel range of your ship. You could even travel into deep space, far outside any star system. Many players liked this flexible approach. However there were some problems with this.
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This free-movement approach, without star-lanes, meant that there wasn’t as much ‘geography’ to the galaxy. Star systems were less likely to appear in nebula clouds, so nebulae formed natural gaps between star systems. But really the only geographical constraint for movement was the varying distances between each star system.
Distant Worlds 2: Galactic Terrain without star-lanes
In Distant Worlds 2 we wanted to preserve the open travel mode of DW1. But we also wanted to add better galactic terrain: natural barriers that added interest and function to different parts of the galaxy.
The answer to this was to use nebula clouds as the natural barriers to travel. In DW2 nebula clouds dramatically slow hyperspace travel. The impact on travel time is so significant that it is usually faster to travel around the nebulae rather than through it. Thus nebulae effectively become the ‘mountain range’ analog of a terrestrial map.
In addition hyperdrive components work slightly differently in DW2. All hyperdrives have a defined jump range. This jump range limits how far a ship can travel in a single jump. Ships can still travel as far as their fuel allows them, but usually their fuel range exceeds their jump range.
The effect of these 2 new features (nebulae that slow hyperspace travel, limited jump ranges) is that ships often have to plot a path of multiple jumps between star systems to reach a destination. The precise path they choose is not fixed. It depends on their current location, their chosen destination, and their jump range.
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Some star systems may thus be in naturally strategic locations, e.g. in a gap between nebulae that many ships will pass through. These locations may be good choke-points, or at least good monitoring points to keep an eye on traffic passing through the area.
Nebulae Effects
Nebula clouds can also have other effects on ships and bases. As in DW1, some nebula clouds are the locations of galactic storms that can cause damage to ships with inadequate defenses. However we have broadened the range of effects to include different types of damage to various ship components. Galactic storms can also have other effects like interfering with sensors or draining shield strength.
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Some star systems can be found inside nebula clouds. You can still travel to these systems. But due to the impermeable nature of nebulae, these star systems can be some of the most remote parts of the galaxy.
Nebulae also affect long range scanners. Ships and bases are very difficult to detect when they are inside nebulae. In addition scanners cannot ‘see’ through nebulae. So you cannot scan objects on the other side of a nebula cloud. This can lead to ‘blind spots’ in scanner coverage.
Summary
Distant Worlds 2 preserves the free movement of Distant Worlds 1. You can travel to any part of the galaxy, even locations in deep space.
However you must now navigate around nebula clouds and perilous galactic storms, often jumping through multiple systems to reach your destination.
This new approach to galactic terrain and travel provides even more options for fun and strategy.
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We hope you enjoyed this look at the galactic terrain of Distant Worlds.
We’ll be back later with more information about other features in Distant Worlds 2.
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Distant Worlds 2 - Dev Diary #5
6 Oct 2021
Welcome to our fifth Distant Worlds 2 (https://www.matrixgames.com/game/distant-worlds-2) Developer Diary.
This diary will discuss exploration in more detail, including how it has changed since Distant Worlds: Universe.
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Exploration and discovery have always been something Distant Worlds does well. The procedurally generated “living galaxy” means that no two galaxies are the same and outside of any story events, there are plenty of unique locations and surprises awaiting you, which can make each game feel different from the last. Some discoveries are relatively mundane, others are quite exciting while still others can be downright galaxy-changing and the same holds true in Distant Worlds 2.
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In Distant Worlds: Universe, we had a wide variety of different ruins and ancient ships, ancient battlefields and such scattered around the galaxy from ages past. That’s all still there in Distant Worlds 2, but we’ve added more and made finding everything a bit more interesting. First, just because you’re in a system doesn’t mean you automatically see everything. What you see, even within a system, now depends on the sensors on the ships and stations you have in that system, so even within the same system you won’t know everything just by jumping in and taking a quick look. In addition, everything now has more layers of information than the binary system we had in Distant Worlds: Universe, where you either knew it was there or you didn’t.
We now provide the player with exploration cues on both the system badges and a separate exploration map overlay to let you easily see which systems have been fully explored and which still require further exploration.
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Wiith regards to planets, asteroids and such, which are what you are mostly exploring, they now come with a range of exploration levels which look like this:
- You know some kind of planet is there at a particular distance from the star (it’s within your sensor range)
- You know what general type of planet it is (Exploration Level 1, normally achievable by having a ship with sensors enter the system for the first time)
- You know its quality, basic resources, basic ruins and bonuses (Exploration Level 10+)
- You start finding the better hidden bonuses, ruins and resource (Exploration Level 20+)
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Exploration levels in the initial release go up to about 100. There’s clearly a lot of room for things to hide between 20 and 100 and as a result, some exploration will continue, even in already known areas, well into the game.
How do you raise the exploration level? Well, in Distant Worlds 2 there are a few ways to do this:
- An exploration ship with a planetary scanner (the most advanced types go up to around Exploration Level 50). Planetary scanners are the quickest way to explore a planet.
- An exploration ship with a planetary survey module (these can go up to the maximum exploration level). Surveys take longer to explore a planet, but can explore it more thoroughly.
- A mining station at the planet. Over time, a mining station can raise the exploration level up to around 30.
- A colony at the planet. Depending on population, a colony will increase the exploration level over time, eventually up to the maximum possible level.
Note that better scanners and survey modules become available through research (and sometimes discovery).
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In terms of exploration, not including special story locations and events, what else can you discover? Everything that you could in Distant Worlds: Universe, and more.
First, we’ve added new descriptive planetary bonuses which distinguish even planets of the same type from each other and can make a given location unique. Some planets are independent worlds, which even have their own populations and can engage in trade and diplomacy.
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Ruins from ancient times can include a variety of discoveries and can also have multiple bonuses which could apply just to that location or even to your entire empire, if you control them. Ruins can also contain many surprises, some not very positive.
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Rare construction and luxury resources can provide access to advanced technologies and ship hulls or boost the development and happiness of your worlds.
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Ancient ships and stations can be repaired and put back into service for your fleets, salvaged for unique technologies, or left alone (some are more dangerous than you may think).
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Finally there are also artifacts, which represent special relics from past ages which when moved to one of your worlds can provide a variety of benefits.
All exploration also comes with some risk though and space creatures, such as the dreaded stealthy Vordikar, are among the dangers any intrepid explorer must face. Pirates also know many secrets, if you can convince them to talk.
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The new nebulas are also often worth exploring, though traveling through their ion, gravitic and radiation storms without sufficient shielding and repair can lead to the complete loss of your exploration ship.
We hope these additional layers of exploration and rewarding discoveries, along with the procedurally generated galaxies, will give you plenty to discover (or conquer)!
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Distant Worlds 2 - Release Date Revealed
Fri, 17 December 2021
The release date of Distant Worlds 2 has been announced.
https://youtu.be/540Zb6RiJVc
The next chapter in the critically acclaimed 4X space strategy game is almost ready.
Players will experience the full depth and detail of this real time strategy game starting from March 10th, 2022, on PC.
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Distant Worlds 2 - Dev Diary #6
4 Nov 2021
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Welcome to our sixth Developer Diary.
This diary is a big one as it discusses the economy in more detail. You’ll learn what makes the Distant Worlds economy unique and how you can make sure that your worlds are prosperous and your empire is strong.
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In Distant Worlds 2, your economy is divided into two parts. The first is the state-controlled economy, over which you have full control. The second is the private or civilian economy, which is everything else. As the state, while you have a great deal of influence over how your private economy is structured, you do not control it and you also have the responsibility to protect it from disruption by pirates and other threats.
As with all areas in Distant Worlds 2, if you prefer to allow your advisors to fully run the state economy for you and focus on other areas of the game, that is possible through the automation settings. For those who enjoy some economic planning and optimization, you can choose how much you wish to intervene, right down to manually controlling all state economic decisions.
The state controls space exploration and construction, colony ships, military ships, stations and troops, spaceports, research stations and monitoring stations. The state is also in charge of setting tax rates, building economic facilitie and adjusting bonus funding.
The private economy controls mining ships, mining stations, freighters, passenger ships and resort bases. It pays for its own construction, maintenance and fuel costs, but also earns revenue from its activities, which it keeps (except for the portion paid to the state in construction or fuel fees or taxes).
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This process starts with your state-controlled exploration ships discovering new systems and worlds. Some of these worlds will contain valuable resources. Those 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.
Once you’ve found these resources, private Mining Ships (unless you’re playing as a Mercantile Guild, in which case you can also build and control these) can extract these resources for you. You may also effectively grant a license to the private economy to build a mining station at a particular location, using one of your state-controlled construction ships. These large mining stations are constructed by the state, but paid for and maintained by the private economy and are much faster at extracting resources, though they require private freighters to also pick up those resources and transport them to where they are needed.
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This combination of state exploration and granting of mining rights combined with private resource extraction and transport is the most basic level of your economy. Keeping the flow of resources moving efficiently from your mining stations to where they are needed is up to the civilian stations and ships and you can watch them go about this business, while knowing that you don’t need to spend much time worrying about it once you’ve made sure the mining stations are where you want them.
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The next most important pieces are your worlds and your spaceports. Your worlds have your population and your people will produce a certain level of productive output on their own, but without adequate Construction and Luxury resources, their potential will be greatly limited. If you supply them with abundant resources, you will find your worlds increasing much more quickly in population, development and happiness. That combination will also allow for higher tax rates and much more income from each world to flow into your state treasury. You can adjust the resource demands and the tax rate on each world if you so wish, or allow your advisors to automatically adjust these.
Spaceports are the largest state-controlled space stations and they are typically built at your populated worlds. From an economy standpoint, they act as hubs for your economy. The freighters and mining ships will transport resources first to your spaceports and from there they will be distributed further to the worlds or stations that need them.
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Spaceports are also the locations where most space construction happens, both for your state ships and the private economy’s ships. The private economy pays the state when it needs the use of these shipyards, which can result in additional bonus income for the state.
Once you have a good network of mining stations, worlds and spaceports setup, the economy will generally run itself quite well barring external disruptions, either due to general threats or due to war. In those cases, your state fleets and troops may be needed to restore peace and orderly economic activity.
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You can also gain access to resources and resource trading income through diplomacy. In Distant Worlds 2, by default you do not begin with the ability to trade with another Empire, but you can sign one of three trade treaties to allow trade. Each treaty has varying degrees of resource availability balanced against tariffs charged. Restricted Trade charges the highest tariffs and makes available only the most abundant resources. Limited Trade is a balance. Free Trade allows full access to all resources without any tariffs. Commerce Centers on your Spaceports as well as trading bonuses from other sources can also increase the value of trade with other empires.
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Once you discover some particularly scenic locations in the galaxy that are near your populated worlds, the civilian economy will also be looking to build some resort bases. When built at good scenic locations with easy access to large populations, these can earn some nice additional tourism income for your economy.
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Corruption is also something that will become a larger issue as your new worlds are farther away from your capitol world and as your worlds grow ever larger in population. This acts to reduce your taxable revenue from that world, but construction of planetary administration facilities can reduce the effects of corruption and ensure that the long arm of the law reaches across your empire.
In Distant Worlds 2, when you have a good positive cashflow as a result of a well functioning economy, you can invest those additional funds into the usual things like building new ships and stations, or new planetary facilities, or trying to “crash research” a particularly important research project. You can also invest it into bonus funding for research and colony growth. By default, this bonus funding is automatically funded once you’ve met your empire’s needs for maintenance and other expenses.
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Without this funding, your research stations will roughly halve their output and your colony population will grow significantly more slowly. Under normal circumstances, this is not an issue, but when events occur that disrupt your economy, losing this bonus funding can result in significant penalties to your empire’s performance. If you build a robust economy and protect it well, hopefully you’ll never have to find out about that the hard way!
If you read through all of this, let us know if you have any questions regarding the economy in Distant Worlds 2.
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Distant Worlds 2 is now available for pre-order
Fri, 11 February 2022
Distant Worlds 2 is now available for pre-orders at 10% discount.
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Distant Worlds 2 will be released on March 10th
. The critically acclaimed 4X space strategy game returns with a brand new 64-bit engine, 3D graphics and a polished interface:
Explore
the vast galaxy with up to 2,000 star systems and tens of thousands of planets, discovering valuable resources, potential colonies for your empire.
Interact
with other empires, discussing treaties, making trade offers, or just giving them a piece of your mind.
Develop
new technologies for building your own unique ships and starbases and defend your empire.
Automate
the various tasks in your empire, so that you can focus on the areas that you enjoy most.
Distant Worlds 2, The Galaxy Lives on.
Pre-order here: https://www.matrixgames.com/game/distant-worlds-2
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Ackdarians
24 Feb 2022
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Ackdarians are highly industrious, semi-aquatic marine mammals. They have large webbed hands and feet, making them excellent swimmers. However their hands are also quite dexterous and they are equally happy living out of water.
Ackdarians are intelligent, peaceful and friendly. They have a rich culture that focuses on the hybrid nature of their living environment, encompassing both water and land.
They excel in building highly maintainable star ships. Their technology includes the advanced TurboThruster engine. This engine component is extremely fuel-efficient, allowing Ackdarian star ships to use less fuel and travel further.
Ackdarians are famous for cultivating Nepthys seaweed, from which they make Nepthys wine. Ackdarians grow enormous forests of the seaweed deep beneath the oceans. They regularly harvest it and then slowly ferment it into a superbly smooth wine.
They are also masters of underwater construction, building vast and elaborate underwater cities. These cities have many levels, some of which reach far down into the vast depths of the oceans they inhabit. At the deepest levels Ackdarians seek out precious resources like the rare Ucantium pearl.
Ackdarians also inhabit the small islands and shallow coastal areas of Ocean planets.
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Mortalens
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Mortalens are a fierce half mammal, half reptile race. They have extremely fast reflexes, an ability that can surprise those unfamiliar with them.
They are easily provoked by the slightest insult, and will pursue an enemy relentlessly until they get vengeance.
Mortalens are excellent warriors – a pursuit they spend much time perfecting. Their warrior code is highly developed. Mortalens consider defeating an enemy in battle as the highest possible achievement. They are widely recognized as almost certainly the best fighters in the galaxy.
They have developed a powerful vectoring engine, the Swift Vector. This advanced engine component gives Mortalen star ships unrivalled agility and maneuvering.
Mortalens enjoy a fairly simple life, following many ancient traditions. These traditions mainly focus on honor and risk-taking.
One particular tradition requires any male seeking tribal leadership to hunt and kill one of the fearsome Mortaks. Mortaks are terrifying large monsters that inhabit the vast sandy desert wastelands of the Mortalen homeworlds. The name Mortalen means “Slayer of the Mortak”.
Mortalens are normally found living in simple block dwellings in the scrub-covered canyon floors of Rocky Desert planets. They can also be found on Sandy Desert or Desert Savanna planets.
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Distant Worlds 2 - Zenox, Teekans and Humans
Thu Mar 03
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Zenox are an ancient feline race with thick golden fur.
They are very cautious and will not lightly enter into an agreement with others. Any new treaties they form usually involve an extremely lengthy period of negotiation, with a protracted review phase at every step of the discussions. Zenox ensure that they are absolutely clear on every last detail of the agreement before finally approving it.
Zenox take a particular interest in recording and preserving galactic history. They seek out items of historical significance from all over the galaxy.
They are also outstanding epic story-tellers. They draw upon their vast store of old myth and legend to produce unique and compelling tales. Zenox claim to be guardians of secret knowledge of galactic history, some of which they reveal in their stories.
In fact some of their historical research has led to unorthodox claims about the galaxy’s past. One of these stories asserts that all the Insectoid races once betrayed the rest of the galaxy to an outside invader. However most other alien races dismiss these conclusions as unproven fairy-tales.
Zenox technology includes an advanced shield component, the Megatron. These powerful shields impart a potent defense to Zenox star ships and bases.
Zenox inhabit the tundra wastelands of Ice Tundra, Ice or Frozen Ice planets. They typically build large cities deep underground in vast ice caves and tunnels.
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TEEKANS
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Teekans are a small furry rodent-like race with three eyes.
They see no value in washing regularly and thus tend to smell.
Teekans take special interest in hoarding all kinds of mechanical junk, disassembling and repairing items they collect. Teekans have very little technology that is truly original, but they can occasionally progress to the point of being space-faring.
Teekans are born traders, profitably selling their wares far and wide. They are also excellent miners, rapidly exploiting any natural resources they discover.
Despite being fairly insular they are very peaceful and make very loyal allies should you wish to befriend them.
Teekans are semi-nomadic; while some live in permanent settlements, many prefer to live in temporary camps, periodically migrating to new locations.
The nomadic Teekan tribes are obsessed with hunting the Bakdur, also known as the Sand Slug. As the herds of Bakdurs migrate across the sandy deserts, the Teekan camps follow them.
Teekans inhabit the vast desert wastelands of Sandy Desert, Rocky Desert and Desert Savanna planets.
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HUMANS
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Humans are tall, largely hairless, bipedal mammals.
They are intelligent, cunning and resourceful and have spread across the galaxy.
Humans are friendly by nature, but others sometimes view them as scheming and manipulative. Humans value political power and influence above all else. They revel in subtle maneuvering and intrigue as they accumulate greater political control. They have an amazing talent for recognizing opportunities for political advancement.
Their natural abilities make them excellent diplomats. Human negotiating skills are renowned – they can transform nearly any apparently hopeless situation to their advantage.
Humans have a natural curiosity that gives them an edge in scientific research. Their scientists and engineers are quick to see the application of new discoveries, inventing new technology based on this knowledge.
Humans have a mysterious past, cloaked in ambiguity. It is unclear where they originated from. Some say that they are actually immigrants from another galaxy. Humans themselves claim Sol as their home system.
Their preferred habitats are the lowland plains of Continental, Forest or Grasslands planets.
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/721454689108a05d3b62bae149768aa0d5688dd1.jpg)
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DISTANT WORLDS 2 - Pre-Release Stream and AMA
Tue 08 March
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/044ca832d503ed4f27be12d20e7c941352eec63e.jpg)
There are only a few days left until the release of Distant Worlds 2 and, for the occasion, we have planned two special events open to the whole community:
- Tuesday, March 8th: AMA with Erik Rutins and Elliot Gibbs, the main developers of DW2.
On this Reddit channel, at 7pm GMT / 2pm EST. They will answer all your questions about the game, its design, and its development.
- Wednesday, March 9th: Pre-Release stream with Erik Rutins. A live stream on the Slitherine Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/slitherinetv) at 6pm GMT / 1pm EST, where, for a few hours, he'll play DW2, giving advice to players and answering their questions.
Distant Worlds 2, the journey begins now.
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(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/0a65493fcf9b7eb44c97e9760d3df14da67f597b.jpg)
https://youtu.be/Kb4D1HhG3oU
https://youtu.be/9YXvQM_hNE0
https://youtu.be/SZ1_tr1j8z0
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The wait is over: Distant Worlds 2 has been officially released.
Thu Mar 10
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/bf61dd950d99c0b26645bb1ff33c6f0fde2d59cc.jpg)
Described as “a light in an age of shadow”, the critically acclaimed strategy series returns to redefine once again the standards of the genre.
A galaxy in constant evolution awaits you in Distant Worlds 2:
Explore the vastness of space, find valuable resources, discover potential colonies for your empire and make contact with other empires, discussing treaties, making trade offers and forging alliances.
Defend the outlying areas of your empire and develop new technologies for building your own unique ships and starbases.
RELEASE TRAILER
https://youtu.be/aU44UKHF6l0
Distant Worlds 2 is all about player choice and the freedom to explore the game world and play the way you want.
Automate the various tasks in your empire, so that you can focus on the areas that you enjoy most.
The possibilities are endless, play your own way and map out your own adventure across the galaxy.
To celebrate the release, we're running a 90% discount on Distant Worlds: Universe on the SlitherineStore until Monday, March 14th.
Moreover, it's possible to purchase a new Bundle containing all the games of the Distant Worlds franchise at an additional 10% discount.
Distant Worlds 2: The Universe is Yours!
Buy here (https://www.matrixgames.com/game/distant-worlds-2)
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Distant Worlds 2 - Update (1.0.1.6)
Fri, 11 March 2022
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We have received reports of crash and performance issues on certain system configurations since Distant Worlds 2 was released.
This is a first quick update to help with some of those issues, we are focusing on these as our top priority and will release further updates within the coming week.
Changes in the 1.0.1.6 Update:
- Fixed crash that sometimes happens when have many game controllers and other devices
- Fixed User Interface Size showing options that are invalid for the current screen resolution
- Improved handling of High DPI settings in Windows
- Added settings to ensure NVidia video cards run in high performance mode - should fix a number of crashes and performance problems
- Fixed rare crash when moving characters via dropdown list in Character screen
- Fixed rare rendering crash
- Fixed rare crash when ship design could not be found when updating render data
- Improved performance at location level when many ships and lots of running lights
- Fixed bug in Start New Game screen where could select race-specific government types when select random race
- No longer prevent construction ships from carrying out base-building when waiting for response on advisor suggestions for repairing abandoned ships or bases
- Hooked up instability and unhappiness after a government change, leader loss, etc ('Have Revolution' button)
- Construction ships no longer feel tempted to repair fighters
- Fixed bug in some game events that was causing loss of a colony
- Fixed wrong tooltip text on buttons in Character Detail screen for captured prisoners
- Further fixes to crashes after lengthy play sessions
- Further improvements to performance by making sure GPU runs at maximum performance instead of sometimes using power-saving mode
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Distant Worlds 2 - Latest Update (1.0.2.1)
Mon Mar 14
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/01a5a8dd439d14cbd627b7708069eacd2f16ef14.jpg)
This build will reset the game's settings. Unfortunately this is required while we continue troubleshooting issues that are preventing some players from being able to play Distant Worlds 2. We apologize for the inconvenience.[/b]
If you had a problem with your keybinds disappearing in 1.0.1.8 or 1.0.1.9, starting a new game in 1.0.2.0 or 1.0.2.1should fix this, or also by applying settings in-game and resaving the game.
Download Link: HERE (https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/DistantWorlds2-UpdateComp-v1.0.2.1.zip)
Latest Troubleshooting FAQ: HERE (https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11896&t=380844)
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is now a new startup log in the /data/logs sub-folder of the Distant Worlds 2 installation.
This is also where any crash logs are located. If you are experiencing an issue, please post these logs for us along with the issue report.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a new GameSettingsOverride.txt in the /data sub-folder of the Distant Worlds 2 installation.
The settings here may help some players experiencing a black screen on load issue.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are experiencing performance issues use the key combination Shift + ~ to enable an overlay on the top left which will confirm for us which GPU DW2 is using on your system as well as other performance parameters.
GENERAL NOTES: We hope that the content streaming memory fix and the improved rendering memory management could fix some of the reported crashes and help with performance dropping over time for some players.
Unfortunately we cannot duplicate the black screen, frequent crashing or unusually bad performance issues on our systems, but we are working to continue investigating them and addressing all possible causes through this and future updates.
Changes in the 1.0.2.1 build:
CRASH FIXES
- fixed rare crash when rendering empire territory
- fixed rare crash when scrapping advanced ship with tech bonus, but your empire has not yet researched a relevant project
- fixed rare crash when calculating military ship strength
- fixed rare crash when evaluating threats to a ship
RENDERING CRASH HANDLING
- more graceful recovery when texture or vertex buffer creation fails due to display adapter crash, reset, or change in performance mode. This should greatly reduce the number of DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED crashes
DIPLOMACY
- improved diplomacy so that relations now more likely to rise to higher levels (top-level treaties) when you work at improving relations with a faction. Remember that you can directly set diplomatic strategy per faction, which will also help improve relations (Befriend, Ally, Close Ally)
FLEETS AND SHIPS
- fixed bug where ships and fleets could sometimes teleport to edge of galaxy when assigned a mission while already jumping
- fleet jump speed coordination now applies to all fleet missions, not just attack missions (ships travel at same jump speed)
- Fuel Tankers no longer use fleet jump speed when part of a fleet
OTHER
- now properly review maximum colony population level as tech improves (colonization modifiers) and planet quality changes (terraforming, etc). This fixes issues with migration missions sometimes not completing
- ensure that player's per-role ship design automation settings are reset between each game (not remembered from previous games)
- Fleet Template screen no longer generates empty fleet when do not have enough money to build
- ensure scroll position in Empire Policy screen is reset to top when open again (previously settings were sometimes not appearing until scrolled up)
- reduced estimated resource demand for fuel so that more accurately aligns with actual usage
- changed default game start settings for research to fixed paths and colonization range limit to 300M
- Data fixes and changes to correct resource costs for some components/hulls with no resource costs or incorrect costs
- Added missing fallback paths for some armor techs
- Fixes for some story event issues
- Extended range for dedicated bombardment weapons
- Simplified main menu scene to assist with consistent startup crash troubleshooting
Changes in the 1.0.2.0 Build:
DISPLAY AND RENDERING
• Reduced asset streaming memory budget to allow more memory for other rendering
• Fixed bugs when auto-detecting display mode with highest refresh rate
• Reenabled fixed timestep updates
• Added more logging to data/SessionLog.txt file: display adapter selection (including primary monitor detected), display modes, galaxy settings
• Added new setting to GameSettingsOverride.txt: GraphicsStreamingMemoryBudget allows specifying video memory in Mb allocated for asset streaming
• Added new setting to GameSettingsOverride.txt: DisableFixedTimeStep: when set to true allows disabling fixed time step (higher FPS, but also higher GPU temperatures and power usage)
CRASH FIXES
• Fixed crash when determining attack targets
• Fixed rare crash when sorting some lists in Control Center
• Fixed rare crash when opening Research screen
• Fixed rare crash when determining locations for new monitoring stations
• Fixed rare crash when changing map overlays
INTELLIGENCE MISSIONS
• Increased difficulty of some intelligence missions, especially steal tech when targeting higher level research projects
• Altered how intelligence mission success chance is calculated so that always a chance of failure (even without counter-intelligence)
• Slightly increased effectiveness of counter intelligence missions (more likely to intercept enemy spy missions)
OTHER
• Fixed bug where default keyboard settings were sometimes not being generated at game startup
• Fixed bug where ships would avoid bombarding a colony that had imprisoned characters
• Fixed bug where invading characters that were killed at a colony were sometimes not removed from the colony
• Avoid executing advisor messages twice when automation is set to Suggest and Execute, e.g. building planetary facilities
• Data fixes to various events, facilities, research projects, ship hulls and artifacts (only available with a new game)
Changes in the 1.0.1.9 Build:
DISPLAY AND RENDERING
- fixed faulty display resolution detection at game start
- improved resolution of correct display adapter when specific adapter requested
- disabled fixed timestep updates (higher FPS)
- allow toggling on-screen FPS and other rendering data using shift-Tilde (top-left corner of most keyboards), which allows seeing which display adapter is being used
CRASH AND HANG FIXES
- fixed crash when empire has revolution and changes government
- fixed hang where fighters at colonies would lock up when their parent colony was wiped out
- fixed hang where exploration ship attempts to explore a location that has nebula sensor disablement that exceeds its scan power
EXPLORATION
- asteroids are now explored much quicker than planets, moons or stars (for both scan and survey)
- ensure all necessary resources in prewarp home system are discoverable at initial tech levels, even when already present
DIPLOMACY
- reduced envy factor in diplomacy when have positive diplomatic strategy for other faction ('We are envious of your huge strength and power')
- envy factor in diplomacy now grows more gradually
OTHER
- more careful about evaluating systems inside nebulae and related logic
- rebalanced loading of game processing for large games with many ships
- fixed ships sometimes getting stuck salvaging debris when has bonuses but came from one of own empire's ships
- construction ships now more careful to avoid building at distant locations (even in same system) when do not have hyperdrive
- no longer generate error sound and effect when move mouse off scrollbar while scrolling a panel or list
Changes in the 1.0.1.8 Update:
- improved handling when graphics device is reset
- improved auto-detection of default screen refresh rate
- ensure file save/load dialog is shown even when hide user interface
- added new GameSettingsOverride.txt file to allow manually setting graphics adapter, resolution, windowed mode. This should be a handy way for players to set stuff directly. Comments in file explain everything. Changes as below:
- extended new GameSetting Changes as below:
- extended new GameSettingsOverride.txt file to allow forcing game to run in exclusive fullscreen mode (GraphicsForceDedicatedFullScreen)
- added startup logging for game session (data/logs/SessionLog.txt)
- reenabled Windows registry settings for requesting high performance GPU mode
- improved calculation of content streaming memory budget on systems with multiple graphics adapters
- improved memory management for rendering in various situations
Changes in the 1.0.1.6 Update:
- Fixed crash that sometimes happens when have many game controllers and other devices
- Fixed User Interface Size showing options that are invalid for the current screen resolution
- Improved handling of High DPI settings in Windows
- Added settings to ensure NVidia video cards run in high performance mode - should fix a number of crashes and performance problems
- Fixed rare crash when moving characters via dropdown list in Character screen
- Fixed rare rendering crash
- Fixed rare crash when ship design could not be found when updating render data
- Improved performance at location level when many ships and lots of running lights
- Fixed bug in Start New Game screen where could select race-specific government types when select random race
- No longer prevent construction ships from carrying out base-building when waiting for response on advisor suggestions for repairing abandoned ships or bases
- Hooked up instability and unhappiness after a government change, leader loss, etc ('Have Revolution' button)
- Construction ships no longer feel tempted to repair fighters
- Fixed bug in some game events that was causing loss of a colony
- Fixed wrong tooltip text on buttons in Character Detail screen for captured prisoners
- Further fixes to crashes after lengthy play sessions
- Further improvements to performance by making sure GPU runs at maximum performance instead of sometimes using power-saving mode
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Distant Worlds 2 - Latest Update (1.0.2.4)
23 March 2022
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/01a5a8dd439d14cbd627b7708069eacd2f16ef14.jpg)
This build will reset the game's settings. Unfortunately this is required while we continue troubleshooting issues that are preventing some players from being able to play Distant Worlds 2. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Latest Troubleshooting FAQ here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/discussions/3/5561388294342230406/
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is now a new SessionLog.txt log file in the /data/logs sub-folder of the Distant Worlds 2 installation.
This is also where any crashdump logs are located. If you are experiencing an issue, please share both your SessionLog.txt and any Crashdump logs for us along with the issue report.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a new GameSettingsOverride.txt in the /data sub-folder of the Distant Worlds 2 installation.
The settings here may help some players experiencing a black screen on load issue. Details on this are in the Troubleshooting FAQ above.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are experiencing performance issues use the key combination Shift + tilde to enable an overlay on the top left which will confirm for us which GPU DW2 is using on your system as well as other performance parameters.
If you had a problem with your keybinds disappearing in 1.0.1.8 or 1.0.1.9, starting a new game in 1.0.2.0 or later should fix this, or also by applying settings in-game and resaving the game.
Changes in the 1.0.2.4 build:
CRASH FIXES
- fixed game hang that was causing saves and loads to fail
- fixed rare crash when applying nebula effects to ships
- fixed rare crash while initiating particle effects
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- altered asset streaming timeout to reduce video memory usage
FLEET AND SHIP FIXES
- now exclude ships that cannot jump when determining fleet jump speed (previously was blocking some missions)
- improved logic for fighters boarding their carriers when the carrier is preparing to jump. Normally when carrier is jumping they will wait for fighters to board, unless very distant. But when carrier is escaping then fighter boarding time is reduced and fighters may be left behind (destroyed)
- improved performance of exploration ship mission selection when in late-game and most systems explored
- fixed bug where ships were sometimes overcautious about travelling to locations with effects, e.g. black holes with ranged damage effects
OTHER FIXES
- reenabled maximum research queue limit of 15 projects
Changes in the 1.0.2.3 build:
CRASH FIXES
- added extra error-handling for DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED errors when display adapter resets
- added delay after applying changes to display settings or encountering DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED adapter reset error
- fixed profiling data not reenabling once disabled
- ensure Steam API updated each frame
Changes in the 1.0.2.2 build:
CRASH FIXES
- fixed some further DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED errors
- fixed crash when calculating population defend strength at a colony
- fixed crash in Abandoned Ship and Bases list when use sort 'Distance from Spaceport'
- fixed rare hang when ship attack mission gets stuck
RENDERING
- IMPORTANT CHANGE: Changed default back buffer format to use Standard Range rendering. This may help some who are experiencing black screens at startup, _but it will also reduce the quality of some visuals_. If you were not previously having problems with black screens or crashes then you can revert to High Dynamic Range rendering in the in-game Game Settings to restore the visuals to their previous quality.
- improved performance when long range scanner map overlay enabled
TROOPS
- changed meaning of colony automation setting 'Automate Infantry Recruitment and Garrison' to now include all troop types, i.e. 'Automate Troop Recruitment and Garrison'
- lowered attack troop recruitment levels, especially for large empires
- added automation icons to Selection Panel to indicate colony automation status for troop recruitment and resource stock levels
HIVE AND PLANET DESTROYER
- added diplomatic incident and reputation impact from using planet destroyer against colonies
- improved movement of planet destroyer ship to better avoid clipping planet surfaces
- capped maximum bonus levels for Hive ships when salvage debris or raid colonies and bases
OTHER
- improved calculation of optimal attack range against targets based on weapon ranges (ship/base attacks and bombarding colonies)
- reviewed policy setting for intelligence mission caution so that aligns with revised mission difficulties. Tooltip explains success chance per level
- empire systems no longer start inside nebulae
- fixed occasional faulty ETA display for transferring artifacts
- fixed population policy window not scrolling with mouse wheel when colony detail panel also open
- fixed blank or incorrect startup colony and base stock levels when colony stock level automation is manually controlled
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Distant Worlds 2 - Latest Update (1.0.2.8)
28 March 2022
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/01a5a8dd439d14cbd627b7708069eacd2f16ef14.jpg)
Latest Troubleshooting FAQ HERE: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/discussions/3/5561388294342230406/?snr=2_groupannouncements_detail_
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are still having any crash or launch issues with DW2, we recommend taking the following steps prior to playing with 1.0.2.6 to make sure corruption from previous crashes is not causing any ongoing issues:
1. Delete the gamesettings and gamestartsettings files in the /data/ sub-folder of your installation directory (In Steam right-click on the game in your library, then choose Properties -> Local Files -> Browse. On GOG you can find this through Manage Installation -> Show Folder).
2. Delete any old saved games in the /data/savedgames sub-folder of your installation directory.
3. Verify all installation files (in Steam right-click on the game in your library, then choose Properties -> Local Files -> Verify Integrity of Game Files. On GOG it is Manage Installation -> Verify/Repair).
4. If you still experience issues, please check in on the tech support sub-forum at Matrix Games or Steam and follow the reporting procedures there to share your log files with us.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is now a new SessionLog.txt log file in the /data/logs sub-folder of the Distant Worlds 2 installation.
This is also where any crashdump logs are located. If you are experiencing an issue, please share both your SessionLog.txt and any Crashdump logs for us along with the issue report.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a new GameSettingsOverride.txt in the /data sub-folder of the Distant Worlds 2 installation.
The settings here may help some players experiencing a black screen on load issue. Details on this are in the Troubleshooting FAQ above.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are experiencing performance issues use the key combination Shift + tilde to enable an overlay on the top left which will confirm for us which GPU DW2 is using on your system as well as other performance parameters.
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Changes in the 1.0.2.8 build:
CRASH FIXES
- fixed savegame corruption when save while expired messages are being purged (note that some past saves were corrupted and if these do not load in 1.0.2.8 they are unrecoverable)
- fixed hang on save due to fighters incorrectly taking their parent carriers 'Prepare and Attack' missions
- fixed rare crash when iterating fleet ships
- fixed rare crash when sending message to empire
- fixed rare crash when iterating empire messages
- fixed crash when clearing pursuers from target
RENDERING FIXES
- changed how vertex buffers are handled to reduce video memory usage and reduce crashes
- now more carefully check for missing buffers when rendering shield impact effects
FLEETS AND SHIPS
- now take more care to ensure nearby ships are added to fleets, thus better preserving fleet cohesion
- exclude ships with manually assigned attack missions when determine whether to break off attack against a target (target jumps outside engagement range or fuel range, etc)
- fleets and ships now better at retaining attack missions against targets that jump to another location, especially when target remains in same system
- fixed bug blocking direct attack fleet missions
- shortened wait time before attacking when fleets regroup at a waypoint (Prepare and Attack), i.e. fleets commence attack phase faster once reach waypoint
OTHER
- ensure freighters with short hyperdrive jump range are not selected for distant transport missions (should fix freighters with Skip Drives sometimes dumping cargo)
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Distant Worlds 2 - State of the Game and Update Roadmap
As of March 28th, 2022 v1.0.2.8
By Erik Rutins
"Hello to everyone in the Distant Worlds 2 community,
First, Elliot and I would like to thank all of our customers for your patience and your support since Distant Worlds 2 was released. For those who have experienced serious issues, we apologize and especially appreciate your understanding as we work to resolve these.
(TLDR: We are prioritizing Critical Issues, Performance Issues and Gameplay issues in that order. We will be putting more time into testing beta updates before they go official to avoid introducing new save or other problems. We will be switching to a slower update schedule to make additional testing possible and to improve the stability of official updates going forward.)
It’s clear, in hindsight, that while we had over 300 testers and DW2 was in alpha and beta testing for a year, we did not have a large enough testing pool to catch all critical issues related to hardware configurations. It’s also clear that despite the best efforts of a lot of very good volunteer testers, we didn’t achieve the level of polish that many of you expected at release.
Since release, we have been working overtime to address those issues preventing gameplay for some customers, while also addressing other serious issues affecting a wider range of players. This has resulted in fourteen new updates in the two or so weeks since release. These updates have fixed many crashes, performance issues and gameplay issues for many players.
Unfortunately, not all the critical issues are resolved (though many have been) and the pace of the updates has also created some serious new issues from time to time, including some save file problems in 1.0.2.2 and 1.0.2.6 that should not have made it to a public release.
While the urgency of getting DW2 working for everyone has been driving us to investigate and iterate as quickly as possible, it’s clear that we can’t maintain the pace of an update every day or two and it’s also clear that in that rush we have not allowed time for enough testing between releases. This is going to change going forward as I’ll explain below.
Priority #1 - Issues Preventing Gameplay
Our first priority remains resolving critical issues preventing gameplay for some customers. The most common of these remain frequent crashes (especially in battle) or crashes on startup or black screens on startup. In addition, we have issues where some very high end GPUs are trying to run DW2 while remaining in some kind of power-saving mode, thus causing much worse than expected performance, or where dual GPU systems are trying to run DW2 on the integrated rather than dedicated GPU to some degree, causing slowdowns and crashes.
We are working on all of these and have brought in Matrix/Slitherine’s Technical Director to work together with Elliot on some of these issues, especially those which appear to be at a lower level than most of the game code.
The main challenge and delay in resolving these has been the great difficulty in reproducing them. We are proceeding in two main directions right now. :
First, we are re-engineering how DW2 creates and manages vertex buffers, which appear to be at the core of many of the issues, especially with AMD GPUs and their drivers. The first iteration of vertex buffer changes is in 1.0.2.8 and we hope this will help many customers.
Second, we are working to improve the low level GPU identification and selection code to make sure that on systems with dual GPUs DW2 is always running on the correct one and that very high end GPUs no longer try to take a nap while DW2 is running. We expect efforts in this area to reach the public within about a week after this roadmap is posted.
Priority #2 - Performance
Our second priority has been performance and while this remains a high priority, we have already made major performance improvements for many systems in the last two weeks and we hope that resolving the remaining low level GPU issues will resolve most of the remaining performance concerns, where systems are above our minimum specifications and playing a reasonable galaxy size and resolution for their hardware.
It’s important to note that we also have seen instances where customers are running maximum size 2000 star galaxies on minimum specification hardware, which will likely never result in good performance, but performance across the board has seen significant improvements and that will continue. We also plan in the future to add more guidance in galaxy setup as to which galaxy sizes are recommended for systems closer to the lower end of the hardware specification and which are suitable for systems at the higher end.
There are also some concerns on certain systems regarding performance in nebulas, with certain map overlays and with the research screen which will need additional work if the low level fixes do not resolve these on all systems. If needed, we will address these more specific performance concerns after the general performance issues are resolved.
Priority #3 - Gameplay
Our third priority has been addressing major gameplay concerns, such as some espionage balance issues, some diplomacy issues and most recently fleet and ship coordination issues. We will be continuing to fit these in as we can and we expect the immediate priorities in this area to be as follows:
1. Further fleet and ship behavior polish, especially relating to interactions with manual orders and fuel tankers. This should be coming in the first beta update this week and hopefully be finished in the next official update.
2. Improve quality of live for manual players with regard to multi-selection of ships and the available orders and automation settings
3. Additional guidance in the UI on the cost of low suitability colonization and support costs for existing and new colonies
4. Improve pathing issues related to nebula storms as well as home systems being generated within nebulas This should also improve pathfinding issues that could in rare cases result in ridiculous paths around the galaxy.
5. Improve auto-design at certain tech levels and ship hull levels for certain ships, especially small troop transports, colony ships and fuel tankers, to make sure they have the necessary ion defenses, speed and range for their missions.
6. Address rare issues with messaging that could cause rapidly repeating/looping messages especially relating to story events and threats like the Hive and Planet Destroyer. Also improve message handling, especially regarding attack notification messages in the late game.
7. Resolve issues relating to some cases where the wrong race is chosen suitability-wise for colonization or migration
8. Polish Espionage and Diplomacy further. Adjust the Espionage difficulties to the desired range and to investigate and fix reported issues with some higher end treaty types.
9. Investigate the reports of issues with either automated stock maintain levels or freighter and passenger ship construction for the Private Sector to ensure all is working as intended. Some progress on this may already have been made in the 1.0.2.8 update.
10. Adjust the corruption scaling to avoid the situation, especially at difficulty settings above Normal, where large colony income could decrease as the colony approached maximum population.
There are also other reported gameplay issues beyond these top 10 which we will also address as we go forward, this is by no means an exhaustive list, but there are our initial goals.
Finally, let me discuss the new update schedule. This week we are releasing 1.0.2.8 as an official update today. Going forward, we plan to release beta updates on Thursdays on Steam and GOG and official update on all stores on certain Tuesdays. That may shift to a once every two week schedule as the most critical issues are resolved. This will not slow down our development, but it will allow us more time to test each beta update and make sure that as much as humanly possible, we’re only taking steps forward and no more steps back.
For those customers still affected by critical issues after 1.0.2.8, we’re sorry we couldn’t get every critical issue resolved yet with our quick updates to date, but know that you remain our highest priority and we won’t stop until we make sure every system within our minimum specifications is able to play DW2 as it was intended.
Thank you again if you took the time to read all of this and for those who have been unhappy with how DW2 has worked on their systems, please check in at least at the end of each week going forward and try the newest update to let us know if things have improved for you.
Sincerely,
Erik Rutins and Elliot Gibbs"
Matrix Games and CodeForce
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Distant Worlds 2 - Latest Update v.1.0.3.1
Tue, 5 April 2022
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1531540/ss_24eedfbaf9793473aab3f4369b59c8b2316d71bd.jpg)
Hello everyone, a new update for Distant Worlds 2 went live, here is the changelog:
CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when ship performs collision avoidance
- fixed crash when ship determines large items to avoid
- fixed crash when completing spy mission
- fixed crash when finding nearest refuelling point
- fixed rare crash during rendering
- fixed rare crash when generating tool tips
- fixed rare crash when investigating abandoned ships or bases
- fixed crash when drawing animated characters
- fixed crash when creature moves to new location
- fixed crash when evaluating threats
- fixed crash when rendering system badges
- fixed crash when ship destroyed
- fixed crash when assigning ship mission
- fixed crash when rendering ship and base symbols
- fixed crash when updating empire territory
- fixed crash when ship exits hyperjump
- fixed crash when rendering effects
- fixed crash when identifying refuelling points
- fixed crash when reviewing fleet escort ships
- fixed crash when ship is refuelling
- fixed crash when finding fastest construction yard
- fixed crash when determining blockaded locations
- fixed crash when artifact changes location
- fixed crash when notifying empire of attack
- fixed rare crash when add display effect
- fixed rare crash when rotating stars and planets
- fixed crash when moving weapon blast
- fixed crash when updating nebula storm clouds
- fixed crash when ship or base destroyed
- fixed crash when showing message
- fixed rare crash when ship fires weapons at attackers
- fixed crash when adding resource/tourism/migration flow data
- fixed rare crash when generating tool tips
- fixed crash when drawing nebula storm clouds
- fixed crash when ship or base destroyed
- fixed crash when directing fleet escorts
- fixed crash when updating nebula cloud rendering
- fixed crash when resolving trade offer description
- fixed crash when getting fleet jump speed
- fixed crash when processing ship
- fixed crash when processing location effects
- fixed crash when checking for active hyperdeny at a location
- fixed crash when generating task to queue construction of a base at a location
- fixed rare crash when evaluating collision avoidance factors
- fixed rare crash when assigning ship mission
- fixed rare crash when determining whether to accept treaty
- fixed rare crash when checking whether a fleet should retreat from a battle
- fixed crash when obtaining ruins and wonders at a location
- fixed crash when drawing research project summary
- fixed rare crash when ship or base fires weapons at attackers
- fixed rare crash when colony conquered by invasion
- fixed rare crash when selecting random resource
- fixed rare crash when determining diplomatic strategies with other empires
- changed how colony city night lights are handled to minimize video memory usage
- improved game update cycle to eliminate possible threading issues during game saves
- fixed crash when evaluating ship boarding status
- fixed rare crash when ship or base fires weapons
- fixed rare crash when finding nearest refuelling point
- fixed rare crash when colony wiped out
- now more careful with handling missing game settings files
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- improved rendering performance when in research screen
ADDITIONAL LOGGING
- added functionality to automatically send crash logs to dev team (prompts player to send in next game session)
OTHER CHANGES
- additional data fixes for certain small troop transport ship hulls and certain artifacts
- now display message to indicate when auto-saving the game
- fixed cluster galaxies sometimes generating star systems outside playable area
- data fixes to certain ship hull data typos for troop transports and some stations
- data fixes for various story event issues
- research project tree fixes for various fallback and prerequisite paths, mainly to fix the armor tree
- Defensive bases can now be research one Tech Level earlier on the Research Tree
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Distant Worlds 2 - Latest Update (1.0.3.7)
Tue, 26 April 2022
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/01a5a8dd439d14cbd627b7708069eacd2f16ef14.jpg)
A new update of Distant Worlds 2 (1.0.3.7) has been released, here's what's new:
CRASH FIXES
- reduced likelihood of hangs before autosaving
- added fix for rare memory corruption when animating space creatures
- fixed crash when adding diplomatic incident
- fixed crash when updating ship engine exhaust
- fixed crash when calculating ship collision avoidance
- fixed crash when resolving character mission location description
- fixed crash when drawing troop summary
- fixed crash when determining resource prices
- fixed crash when determining fleet systems within engagement range
- fixed crash when evaluating threats to ship or base
- fixed crash when fixing ships in a location
- fixed crash when updating location for fighters onboard a carrier
- fixed crash when rendering message
- fixed crash when firing weapons
- fixed crash when rendering character traits
- fixed crash when determining retrofit resources for a ship or base
- fixed crash when finding nearest refuelling point
- fixed crash when drawing empire relation in diplomacy screen
- fixed crash when determining empire mining targets
- fixed rare crash when loading some older savegames
- fixed crash when switching camera modes
- reworked some rendering to further minimize DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED crashes
- fixed crash when evaluating threats
- fixed crash when calculating location visibility level
- fixed crash when rendering research screen
- fixed crash when examining recent trade deals
- fixed crash when extracting resources
- fixed crash when identifying independent repair bases
- fixed crash when fulfilling resource orders
- fixed crash when sorting items while determining mining targets
- fixed crash when executing action
- fixed crash when calculating construction yard wait time
- fixed crash when identifying refuelling points
- fixed crash when rendering ship or base summary
- fixed crash when drawing construction yard summary
- fixed crash when updating ship engine exhaust
- fixed crash when preparing ship for retrofit
- fixed crash when changing ship empire
- fixed crash when obtaining fleet template designs per role
- fixed crash when auto-assigning scout mission to exploration ship
- fixed crash when launching assault pod
- fixed crash when updating user interface controls
- fixed crash when refreshing graphics setup
- fixed crash when checking whether ship is in battle
- fixed crash when checking for appearance of hive threat
- fixed crash when completing ship command
- fixed crash when planet removed in game editor
- fixed crash when calculating ship collision avoidance
- fixed crash when drawing system exploration data
- fixed crash when drawing system summary
- fixed crash when editing bonuses in game editor
- fixed crash when drawing research button
- fixed crash when updating tourism/migration/resource flow data
- fixed crash when adding diplomatic relation incident
- fixed crash when rendering creature effects
- fixed crash when rendering map overlay buttons
- fixed crash when reviewing army templates
- fixed crash when updating character bonuses
- fixed crash when processing ships and bases
- fixed crash when inflicting ion damage from nebula storms
- fixed crash when removing weapon blast from location
- fixed crash when ship unloads passengers
- fixed crash when generating new character
- fixed crash when building facility
- updated Harmony library to resolve some problems
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- improved general performance, especially in very large games
- further adjustments to some map overlays to improve performance (long range scanners, exploration, diplomacy)
- added new default system badge mode (Basic) with smaller, simplified badges when zoomed out to galaxy level. Extended mode is same as previous Basic mode
- improved general performance relating to fleet operations
- fixed occasional hang when fleets bombard colonies
- fixed occasional performance 'stuttering'
- fixed ship movement sometimes being jerky when zoom into same location
- improved rendering performance for map overlays: exploration, diplomacy long range scanners
SYSTEM BADGES AND MAP OVERLAYS
- fixed clickable regions for new basic system badges
- ensure map buttons retain highlight state when apply changes to graphics settings
- altered map overlay buffer format (long range scanners, exploration, diplomacy) to improve overlay opacity and visibility
SAVEGAMES
- updated autosave timer logic to ensure save at specified intervals. Reminder that paused time does not count towards autosave interval
- now check for low disk space when saving game and send warning message if needed
- more graceful handling of savegame failures for whatever reason
OTHER CHANGES
- fixed slow initial zoom-in when start new game
- now purge old low-priority empire messages
- altered texture streaming memory budget to be more generous when no shared system memory allocated
- waypointing ships now properly slow to a stop while waiting for other fleet ships to arrive
- fixed bug when performing jump pathfinding
- fixed colony bombardment ship range when colony has long range defensive weapons (previously ships were too cautious to approach colony when tactics were Evade)
- updated values for planetary shield facilities
- data fixes to allow planetary destroyer to be built again
- fixed Load Fleet Template dialog to properly load from FleetTemplates sub-folder (same folder as Save Fleet Template)
- exploration and diplomacy map overlays now auto-enable when in relevant UI area
- long range scanner, exploration and diplomacy map overlays now more opaque
- The resource and credit discount on Planet Destroyer hulls has come to an end
- Ship hull fixes for certain freighters and transports
- Fixes to component data typos and some tweaks some of which affect the permissible slot sizes for certain late game weapons
- Additional story event fixes
- Fixes for some facility upgrade issues due to incorrect IDs in the facility data
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Distant Worlds 2 - Major Update v. 1.0.4.8
Tue, 31 May 2022
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/f470b4d4683be39c116ebff1d43205106bdd39c2.jpg)
We are glad to announce the new Major Update for Distant Worlds 2, this update will feature many gameplay fixes and improvements to Fleet and Ship Behavior (including Fuel Tankers and Starfighters), the Private Economy and Resource distribution, Intelligence MIssions, Colonization and Migration, Tourism, Character skills. Also, some significant performance improvements, especially for the late game.
We hope you like it, enjoy and let us know what do you think about it.
Changes in 1.0.4.8:
This update includes many improvements in fleet coordination and fleet and ship behavior. Some of the issues addresses were due to bugs in the game, but others were due to confusion caused by unclear labeling or explanation on our part, which the below documentation and changes should resolve. Please read through the explanations below as well as the change list to fully understand how fleet and ship tactical settings are meant to function.
Fleet Engagement Range vs. Engagement Range
There is now Fleet Engagement Range (re-named) at the fleet level and Engagement Range at the ship level.
When a ship is in a fleet, the Fleet Engagement Range will override the ship's Engagement Range. The ship will only use its own Engagement Range when it is not in a Fleet.
The Fleet Engagement Range determines at a strategic level what missions/targets the fleet is in range of taking on. Previously, there was a gap at the system level where fleet and ship engagement ranges could conflict or override each other, which would result in the most restrictive of the two being used. That has been resolved. Now, if there is a target in the system and there is a fleet in the system with Fleet Engagement Range that would allow attacking within that system, the fleet will go attack that target as a fleet even if the individual ship settings would not allow individual ships to respond.
Manual Fleets and Military Attack Policies
It's important to note that a Manual fleet will not automatically respond outside of its own system. DW2 assumes that a Manual fleet is fully under manual orders for anything out of system. If you would like a fleet to automatically respond outside of its own system, it needs to be set to one of the Automatic fleet roles (for example, Attack or Defend) and its Fleet Engagement Range must allow it.
Also, if you have your Military Attacks Policy in the Military section of your policies set to Manual, then no fleets of any kind will respond or attack outside their own systems without being manually ordered to do so.
In order to have fleets fully responding outside their systems, you need to have:
1. Fleet Engagement Ranges set to allow it
2. Each Fleet needs to be set to one of the Automatic roles
3. The Military Attacks policy cannot be set to Manual
By default, all these things are true, but if you have changed these settings please be aware of their intended interactions and results.
Fleet Attack Stance
This was no longer performing any necessary function given the other settings and their capabilities. It was however adding confusion for players, so it was removed.
Fleet Retreat Strategy
There was an issue preventing this working as intended, which should now be resolved. It should also be noted that this has a different function than the Retreat When setting at the ship level. It was therefore renamed to Fleet Retreat Strategy to avoid confusion.
Fleet Retreat Strategy affects when the entire fleet will consider changing orders to escape a location based on overall strength comparison at that location. Individual ships will still follow their Retreat When setting in terms of responding to damage caused to that ship.
Note that Manual fleets will not at this time retreat as a fleet unless ordered to do so by the player. This is working as intended, as we generally lean towards manual meaning that the player has full control and gets to decide when the fleet retreats. All automated fleets will respect the Fleet Retreat Strategy.
Position within Fleet
We realized that the previous UI terminology used "Role" in two different instances. Role now refers only to the general type of ship (i.e. Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser).
The position of a ship in a fleet within the fleet formation is now more intuitively called "Position within Fleet" in the ship's tactical settings. The previous "Attack" has been renamed to "Core" to make it more clear that this position is in the center of the fleet, whereas "Close Escort" is the inner ring and "Picket" is the outer ring of the formation. In most cases, we recommend placing your point defense-oriented ships in the Picket or Close Escort positions and keeping your most valuable Capital ships and long-range standoff ships in the Core.
Ship Tactical Setting Apply Buttons
We recognized that the importance of the tactical settings at the ship level was not matched by the UI in terms of the ease of adjusting them post-construction. There are now three new buttons available for any ship in a fleet:
- Apply these tactical settings to all ships of this design in the fleet
- Apply these tactical settings to all ships of this role in the fleet
- Apply these tactical settings to all ships of this position in the fleet
- Apply these tactical settings to all ships in the fleet
This only affects the ship level tactical setting. You can see these by selecting a ship that is in a fleet and looking at its tactical settings.
We also plan to add the ability to mass apply tactical setting changes whenever multiple ships are selected through any method in the future.
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- improved general performance, especially in very large late-game galaxies
- fixed rare bug that was sometimes slowing general game performance
- improved performance when calculating construction yard wait times, especially for large games
FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed Prepare and Attack fleet missions to properly evaluate need to refuel
- fleets now more permissive when evaluating Prepare and Attack missions. If sufficient fleet ships in target system and can handle attack against target then less inclined to first refuel or gather. In other words, now more likely to attack targets in same system directly without first refuelling or gathering, even when some fleet ships are dispersed or need refuelling
- fleets now wait for all fighters to board carriers before hyperjumping
- when preparing to hyperjump, carriers now move more slowly while waiting for all fighters to board, thus making it easier for fighters to catch up with carrier
- fighters boarding carriers now move at maximum speed when returning to carrier from far away
- fixed fighters sometimes incorrectly boarding carriers and then immediately relaunching
- fleets now more careful to have enough available ships when auto-assigning attacks against targets
- fleets more careful about completing attack missions (e.g. raid) when all fleet ships have completed the mission type
- ensure disable action buttons when select fleet of another empire
- fixed some additional situations where fleets would not engage threats properly
- broadened Guard mission so that fleets/ships will engage threats at same location, even when threat is not currently attacking guard target
- fixed bug where fleet engagement range was sometimes not properly overriding ship engagement range
- ensure fleets properly use fleet engagement range when evaluating whether to attack targets (i.e. do not downgrade to use each ship's engagement range)
- manually assigning refuel/repair/retrofit missions to automated fleets no longer immediately changes their role to Manual. All other mission types remain the same and will automatically change their role to Manual if currently automated (Attack, Defend, Raid, Invade)
- fixed bug where fleets would sometimes not engage threats, even when within engagement range
- ensure that automated fleets do not get caught in attack/retreat loop
- fixed manually assigning Guard missions to fleets sometimes not being assigned to individual fleet ships
- when investigating dangerous locations fleets are now more careful to ensure have adequate strength to handle expected threats
- ship missions that require docking at a colony (e.g. load/unload troops, load/unload colonists, etc) now more flexible about ship position, does not necessarily need to move to new position if already close to planet. This change helps these mission types complete faster
- troops reserved for pickup by troop transport now immediately unreserved when transport destroyed (previously took a few seconds)
FLEET AND SHIP TACTICAL SETTINGS
- removed unused Fleet Stance tactical setting
- in Tactical Settings dialog, the orange warning highlight for Fleet Engagement Range when the Military Attack policy is manually-controlled (thus disabling auto fleet engagement) is now used even when selected fleet is automated
- updated Galactopedia topic for Tactical Settings to reflect updated ship and fleet tactical terminology and functionality
- added comprehensive tooltips explaining each item in the Tactical Settings screen
- ensure Tactical Settings dialog closes when select ship or fleet of another empire
- clarified wording of explanations for Fleet Engagement Range in Galactopedia and Tactical Dialog tooltips (manual fleets auto-engaging within current system)
- added tooltip to explain that Fleet Retreat tactical setting is not used by manually-controlled fleets
- added tooltip to Fleet Engagement Range to explain when this is used by fleets
- changed labeling for some fleet tactical settings for extra clarity
- ensure Tactical Settings dialog not displayed when open Ship Design screen
- to reduce confusion role in ship tactical settings has been replaced with position within fleet
- added extra 'Apply Settings' buttons to Tactical Settings dialog when displaying tactics for ship that is part of a fleet: allow applying settings to all fleet ships with same role, design, position in fleet.
FUEL TANKERS
- automated Fuel Tankers in a fleet are no longer set to manual control when you set their fleet to Manual or when manually assign a fleet mission. This allows Fuel Tankers to remain automated and auto-delivering fuel to the fleet ships while the rest of the fleet is under manual control. Note that you can still set fleet Fuel Tankers to manual control when individually selecting them
- ensure properly exclude fuel tankers when generating action button for fleet retrofit (fleet fuel tankers operate independently and retrofit on their own schedule)
- automated Fuel Tankers now retrofit and repair as needed even when assigned to a fleet
- additional tweaks to Fuel Tanker evaluation of when to refuel various ship roles, e.g. exploration ships now not refueled until lower fuel level, thus spending less time waiting for fuel tankers
- Fuel Tankers now periodically check whether target ship still needs refueling, cancelling mission if needed
- Fuel Tankers no longer refuel other Fuel Tankers unless they are completely out of fuel (including no fuel in cargo)
- Fuel Tankers more careful to avoid locations that have damaging storm effects that they cannot handle
- Fuel Tankers now more careful to avoid attempting to refuel ships that will soon enter hyperspace, instead prefer idle ships or ships that have already reached mission destination
- Fuel Tankers now more careful to avoid traveling to hostile locations when attempting to join up with fleet. Will instead move to nearby location free of threats
- ensure Fuel Tankers can refuel ships even when in deep space far from any normal location
COLONIZATION, MIGRATION AND TOURISM
- improved selection of queued colonization targets by existing colony ships that already have population loaded. Will now also unload population if necessary so that can load more suitable population from existing colonies
- added new mission type to unload passengers for colony ships with colonists onboard. Access by selecting colony ship and right-clicking on one of your empire's colonies for pop-up mission list
- altered auto-assigned migration missions to prefer higher suitability destination colonies
- now exclude Colony Ships as available to colonize new colony while loading colonists (assign mission button in New Colonies list)
- when colonization range limits are enforced (game startup settings) now use straight-line distance to evaluate whether potential colony is in range of existing colonies (instead of path time, which caused issues when potential colonies were in nebulae)
- fixed bug where colony ships would sometimes load wrong race as colonists
- further improved race selection for new colonies, even for independent colonies, i.e. attempt to use most suitable race
- further improved automated selection of colonizing race for Colony Ships based on queued and non-queued colonization targets (i.e. attempt to select most suitable race for new colonies). This applies even when you have custom population policies at your colonies that would otherwise prioritize other races for pickup (e.g. Resettle)
- now prevent unloading colonists at colonies that cannot accept them due to either blocking population policy (e.g. Do Not Accept) or colony already being at maximum population
- disabled ships (cannot move) no longer count as threats and thus do not show up on threats list or block colonization or construction at the location
- tourism missions now properly ignore colony population policy settings (tourism to destinations with policy of Do Not Accept, etc)
- ensure tourism destinations are selected more evenly by passenger ships (resort bases + scenic colonies)
ECONOMY, COLONIES, RESOURCES AND CONSTRUCTION
- colony corruption and support costs now scale similarly to colony revenue beyond 50% maximum population. This means that net colony revenue no longer decreases as population increases, though it will increase much more slowly.
- reduced luxury resource consumption rate at colonies by 33% to improve resource logistics across a variety of galaxy map settings and resource prevalences
- reduced default stock level for fuel storage at mining stations
- ensured spaceports not at colonies have more storage space and higher stock levels for fuel and construction resources
- freighters transporting resources to locations now allow some over-delivery of amounts beyond cargo capacity for each resource. This especially improves efficiency for locations that are space-constrained and thus have stock levels the same as the cargo capacity (e.g. mining stations, research stations)
- ensure resource ordering for colonies and bases requests excess amount above stock levels to reduce frequency of reordering and thus reduce freighter demand
- fixed bug where destinations were sometimes failing to receive resources via freighter
- added warnings to New Colonies list and Selection Panel indicating when a planet has low suitability for colonization and the economic consequences
- new resources are now properly discovered and used when you acquire a ship or base with the previously unknown resource in its cargo (e.g. abandoned base, story event, etc)
- fixed bases built at independent colonies (e.g. research stations) incorrectly using cargo, stock levels and cargo capacities of parent colony (should only do so when parent colony is own empire)
- ensured Resources and Stock Levels dialog does not incorrectly indicate that some resource amounts on hand are below the stock level
- Resources and Stock Levels dialog now includes explanatory note about foreign sources in tooltip for Mined and Known Locations
- colonies now always attempt to stock super luxury resources when available (Korabbian Spice, Loros Fruit, Zentabia Fluid), even when they can meet their target development level through other, more accessible luxury resources
- ensure automated construction does not build too many ships at once (minimize big swings in cash on hand, etc)
EMPIRE BONUSES
- all maintenance savings bonuses now applied by dividing by (1 + bonus amount) instead of multiplying by bonus amount (ship maintenance, troop maintenance, planetary facility maintenance). This means that maintenance savings can never be greater than full maintenance costs (no negative maintenance)
- fixed some bonus types being applied incorrectly (TroopRecoveryRate, ShipEnergyUsage)
- ensure that empire-wide bonuses from research are properly integrated into overall empire bonuses (e.g. Troop Maintenance Savings from Improved Logistics project, etc)
CHARACTER SKILLS AND DIMINISHING RETURNS
- character skills at a location are now applied with diminishing values. Thus the best character for a skill applies 100% of their skill level, but all subsequent characters only apply a steadily diminishing proportion of their skill for that area (thus 100%, 50%, 25%, etc). This means that is is often better to spread characters across multiple locations instead of concentrating them at a single location, e.g. admirals and generals in multiple fleets, scientists in multiple research stations, etc.
- updated Galactopedia topic Characters to explain diminishing character skills for a location
- slowed growth of character skill levels
INTELLIGENCE MISSIONS
- decreased success chance for intelligence missions. Diminishing value begins at 75% instead of previous 90%. Thus spies must have much higher skill levels to reach high success chance
SHIP DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS
- tweaked default design templates for colony ships and troop transports to maximize chance of sufficient reactor energy output to power hyperdrives at full speed and thus extend travel range
- further improved auto-design for troop transports to maximize fuel range by ensuring hyperdrives have full reactor energy supply
- fixed faulty weapon damage graph for tractor beams in Ship Design screen
EXPLORATION
- fixed exploration ships sometimes pausing exploration of home system when have not yet found fuel source
- fixed black hole vortex range so that exploration ships can properly complete mission
OTHER CHANGES
- suppress incorrect initial mouse-up when enter research screen from main view header (would sometimes incorrectly queue the hovered research project)
- fixed text display bug for colony events reported as Galaxy News (Patriotic Wave, Predictive History, etc)
- limit maximum number of items displayed in Summary View (bottom-middle of screen) at galaxy level (colonies, spaceports, fleets) to ensure that on lower resolution displays this does not become overwhelming in the late game
- altered Ghost Fleet Base story event to always be generated at location with fuel source
- ensure raid countdown processed for bases
ART BUNDLE CHANGES
- fixed various issues in the art bundles with incorrect texture sizes as well as uncompressed or unstreamed texture settings
- substantially reduced texture memory usage for creatures, nebulae and effects
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Distant Worlds 2 - Update v1.0.4.9
Tue, June 28, 2022
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1531540/ss_24eedfbaf9793473aab3f4369b59c8b2316d71bd.jpg)
Hello everyone,
here's the changelog of the latest update:
FLEETS, SHIPS AND FIGHTERS
• Fixed bug that was sometimes blocking some fleet missions when Military Attack automation was manually controlled
• Prevent fleet ships from escorting their Core ships while they are still exiting construction/repair hangar
• 'Join ships to fleet' button now properly filters out any non-military selected ships when adding them to the fleet
• Fixed fighters sometimes using wrong weapons attack range (too low)
• Ensure fighters retain capture mission, assisting carriers to lower shields and capture target
CHARACTERS AND INTELLIGENCE MISSIONS
• Ensure character bonuses at location (colony, ship, fleet, base) only apply to characters from own empire (e.g. not foreign ambassadors)
• Altered intelligence mission difficulty thresholds so that spies more willing to attempt riskier missions. See updated tooltip for Mission Difficulty Caution in Intelligence Missions section of Empire Policy screen for new levels
• Ensure specified percentage of spies properly used for counter-intelligence (Counter Intelligence Ratio in Empire Policy)
SPACE CREATURES
• Ensure creatures do not get too far from horizontal plane (vertical offset)
• Ensure creatures do not go too close to stars, thus being difficult to attack
OTHER
• Research summary in header now shows when a project is being crash researched
• Extended research hover summary in header to also show queued research projects
• Fixed minor text display bugs in some game events
• Fixed Prime Research Station story event sending repeated messages when Suppress Messages turned on in game settings
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Distant Worlds 2 - Update v. 1.0.6.4
Tue, August 23, 2022
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/f01d3fcc55f9e302443ca1b5746d716bed69c29c.jpg)
This major official update includes an engine upgrade, a new Vulkan rendering mode and many, many bug fixes, performance, UI, AI and gameplay improvements. Please read through the changes below to see how to get the best results from DW2 on your system.
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE (New Engine and .NET 6.0):
The Core game engine has been upgraded to use the latest version of Stride. (4.1.0.1)
Due to this, .NET 6.0 is now required to run the game (it previously required .NET 4.0). Steam should start to install it automatically. If your Steam client does not start the install, please Exit Steam and try again. This should hopefully refresh the client and force it to do so.
- If the prompt with .NET 6.0.5 doesn't start/appear. Please download dotnet from the link below. Then restart your PC before launching DW2.
Dotnet Download: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-6.0.5-windows-x64-installer
IMPORTANT NOTE (Vulkan/DXVK Support):
If you still experience crashes with 1.0.6.4 or later, especially crashes in battle, please try the new DXVK rendering option in the game settings. This can be found under "Rendering Mode", which can be switched from DirectX 11 to DXVK. DXVK is only guaranteed to work with the SDR (Standard Definition Rendering) option in your game settings. It may work with some HDR (High Definition Rendering) settings, but we do not advise trying those at this time. The DXVK option will likely resolve many issues caused by driver bugs or incompatibilities. If you try this setting and the game does not launch, please note the command line option in the changes below to switch back to DirectX 11. (To force DirectX on launch, add /use-dx11 as a command-line argument to DistantWorlds2.exe)
Changes in 1.0.6.4 (August 12th, 2022):
ENGINE UPGRADE
- Upgraded engine to Stride 4.1.0.1, which requires .NET 6.0. Please see the important notes above.
RENDERING AND GAME SETTINGS
- added Vulkan/DXVK rendering option in game settings
- integrated new command line option to use DirectX11, which resets any registry settings to use DXVK. To use add /use-dx11 as a command-line argument to DistantWorlds2.exe
- persisted some previously unsaved game settings (Control Center List item size, rendering option toggles)
- Auto-detect and warn when PC is missing a vendor-specific display driver (i.e. when only Available adapter is 'Microsoft Basic Render Driver')
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- minor performance improvements in some areas
- avoid precaching some models and textures when have low video memory
- added some extra game settings to allow disabling some rendering effects
- extended multi-threading to better utilize CPU cores and provide better performance
- improved texture memory management to improve performance and further minimize crashes
- enabled early exit from many multi-threaded tasks to provide more responsiveness in very large games when exiting to main menu or initiating load or save
- improved performance when calculating construction yard wait times for incoming ships, thus improving responsiveness in very large games
- Improved rendering performance by implementing shader instancing when drawing galaxy map highlights (list items) and empire territory circles/lines. These improvements are especially evident in large games when zoomed out to the galaxy level
- improved performance when opening very large lists in Control Center (e.g. civilian ships)
CRASH AND BUG FIXES
- fixed various crashes relating to Stride rendering
- fixed rare crash when resolving ship mission commands
- fixed rare crash when calculating ship collision avoidance factors
- fixed bug where location effects could sometimes linger for ships, disrupting subsequent movement
- fixed crash when determining threat level for enemy ship
- fixed crash when checking whether research project prerequisites have been researched
- fixed rare crash when escorting target
- fixed rare crash when calculating ship strength including fighters
- fixed rare crash when drawing diplomatic relation details
- fixed crash when click on non-item area of Resource Flow selection list
- fixed rare crash when executing some game events
- fixed crash when signalling docking completion for a ship
- fixed rare crash when use planet destroyer
- fixed crash when ship evaluates nearby threats
- fixed issue where some older savegames could not be loaded
- improved locking to reduce contention and fix crashes
- fixed crash when checking ships within range at a location
- fixed crash when finding shortest docking wait queue at a location
- fixed rare crash when calculating jump path between systems
- fixed crash when reviewing system visibility after ship exits hyperjump
- fixed crash when drawing location badges
- fixed rare crash when creating new colony
- fixed crash when ship reviews its fleet escort
- fixed crash when recording ship revert mission
- fixed crash when checking for abandoned ships at location
- fixed crash when fleet considers whether to retreat
- fixed crash when updating system summary data
- fixed rare crash when loading ship designs
- fixed crash when calculating construction yard wait times
- fixed crash when calculating stock levels
- fixed crash when removing list items
- fixed crash when merging temporary locations
- fixed crash when resolving character location description
- fixed crash when generating message log user interface
- fixed crash when ship evaluates nearby threats
- fixed rare crash when showing research screen
- fixed rare crash while ship is determining system jump path
- fixed a number of multi-threading-related crashes
- fixed rare crash when processing ship movement and energy consumption
- fixed crash when ship identifies nearby threats
- improved context-locking for rendering to further reduce DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED errors
- enabled capture of DirectX Debug information when switched on
- improved error reporting with more detail
- fixed rare crash when a ship refuels
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added text formatting to various messages
- fixed some minor display issues with text layout
- added further tooltips to Design List screen explaining Retrofit and Status columns
- ensure that accepting a request to help another empire battle the Hive threat also ends any war between you
- fixed sorting in Defensive Bases list for Name and Distance From Spaceport
- added more detailed inline text formatting for markup language
- extended text formatting to messages
- updated Design List screen to more clearly indicate toggling for some items (underlines for Role Design, Auto Retrofit, Is Active columns)
- added extra filter in New Mining Locations list: 'All Resources - No Asteroids'
- improved selectability of fleets and other items at galaxy level
- added popup selection when click multiple items at same point
- selection popup list is ordered by type, with fleets, stars and spaceports first
- ensure player empire territory marked green (friendly) in Diplomacy map overlay
- now include Autosaves for Continue Game button, i.e. if an autosave is the most recent savegame then that game will be resumed
- better selection of default user interface size based on screen resolution (i.e. larger default size for larger screens)
- fixed bug where ships sometimes could not be selected at system level
- fixed Mining Locations list sometimes showing wrong items when filtering by a specific resource
- properly filter out unknown resources in Colonies list
- Adjusted some galaxy map overlays so that properly fade out as zoom in (long range scanners, diplomacy, exploration)
- Adjusted general opacity for some map overlays (long range scanners, diplomacy, exploration)
- added Continue Game button to main menu (load most recent savegame)
FLEET, SHIP AND STARFIGHTER BEHAVIOR
- fixed ships sometimes incorrectly reassigning mission when get too close to planets
- reduced collision avoidance contention when ships are docking at base, thus improving throughput
- further extended logic for ships to avoid exiting hyperjump when mission changes: will now remain in hyperjump when change - mission to move to coordinates (at same location), even though do not have specific target
- fixed fleet ships sometimes getting stuck in deep space unable to jump
- fixed damaged fleet ships that cannot jump to repair location causing repeated fleet repair missions
- improved fleet target selection so that do not upgrade attack against enemy ship to attack against entire fleet unless lead ship of enemy fleet is visible, thus better assessing whether need to refuel or gather before attack
- now ensure ships always get properly refueled by fuel tanker, even when very close to planet
- fighters now better at continuing to escort carriers when supporting ongoing Raid, Capture or Bombard missions (fighters no longer stop idle in space)
- fixed bug where fleets were sometimes calculating fuel range incorrectly and thus taking on missions that were too distant
- fighters now never allow collision avoidance to prevent them from boarding their carrier, thus avoiding holding up the carrier's jump, etc
- ships now remain in hyperjump when assign new mission if target is at same location as previous mission, e.g. thus have all fleet ships continue their jump to threat investigation location after first ship exits jump and upgrades mission to attack threat (no need to exit jump and then restart new jump)
- added new ship mission type: Explore Location - explores all items at a location, useful for manually exploring asteroid fields. Select exploration ship and right-click on an item for popup menu with this mission
- fleets no longer incorrectly refuel when assign prepare and attack mission against target outside a star system
- default designs for medium and large freighters now have more fuel tanks to give greater range than small freighters
- fixed bug where some ship/base retrofits were not completing properly, i.e. some new components were not being added
- improved willingness of construction ships without hyperdrives to build new bases at own location
- carriers no longer launch fighters when exit jumps at transit locations on way to final attack target, thus speeding up transit jumps (only launch fighters when real threats or arrive at final attack target location)
- creating new fleet from multiple selected ships now also properly updates action buttons under Selection Panel to match new fleet
TROOPS AND TROOP TRANSPORTS
- fixed some non-playable race troop sizes (were zero, thus very fast recruitment, etc)
- ensure troop recruitment costs always paid, even when manually recruited
- troops named with proper numeric prefix that relates to number of troop units in empire
- Infantry defense strengths increased
- fixed automated non-fleet troop transports sometimes getting into endless loop of load/unload troops at a colony
- troops at colonies now more likely to be ungarrisoned when not needed to meet defensive requirements or rebellion supression (e.g. shortly after conquest), thus freeing them up for reloading on troop transports
- more careful auto-loading and unloading of troops for automated troop transports that are not part of a fleet. Avoid getting in endless loop of loading/unloading troops
DIPLOMACY
- empires now properly decide whether to honor Defense Treaties, will consider whether to declare war on aggressors against their allies. Declining to honor treaty negatively impacts relations and reputation, whereas honoring the treaty (declaring war on aggressor) improves relations and reputation. When war diplomacy is not automated, player will be prompted with modal message window where they must choose whether to honor treaty or not
- value of offer to end war with 3rd party in diplomacy trade deal screen now valued much lower. Other empire also has to be interested in an end to your war with 3rd party, i.e. they are friends with 3rd party and concerned about the war
- Non Aggression treaties no longer offered when diplomatic strategy for a faction is set to Conquer
- altered acceptance levels for diplomatic trade deals with other empires: angry empires require much higher value offered, friendly empires no longer offer very favourable deals
- increased negative diplomatic incident amount from invading colonies, whether the colony is independent or owned by another faction. Negative incident amount now also scales with colony size, i.e. larger colonies generate stronger incident. However when at war with faction then incident is much lower, as is negative reputation impact
- increased negative diplomatic incident amount from colony bombardment. Note that this is not just a constant value, but rather is tied to actual amount of population loss
- fixed bug where special locations could be traded repeatedly in Diplomacy trade screen
- fixed bug where could not refuel ships at pirate bases when have Military Refuelling agreement
- ending a War or signing a Non Aggression treaty now clears any dangerous locations for other empire, thus preventing automated fleets from unnecessarily investigating locations that are no longer a threat
SHIP DESIGN
- ensure Upgrade Design button properly accounts for components that have matching category but not the necessary capabilities, e.g. Star Marine Barracks that are crew quarters category but are used differently
COLONIZATION AND SUITABILITY
- ensure some story planets have proper quality levels to eventually become colonized by specified race
- fixed automated colonization sometimes colonizing targets slightly below suitability threshold in empire policy
- improved loading colonists for new colony targets so that load most suitable race even when is not dominant race at load colony
- tweaked independent colony suitability for some races so that always have suitability of at least +20 (economically viable)
- colony ships now less likely to retrofit and more likely to colonize any targets within range before refuelling (i.e. do not refuel if already have colonization target within range)
- improved willingness of automated Colony Ships to colonize queued colonization targets that are independent colonies but are unsuitable for empire races (does not matter because bulk of population is pre-existing well-suited native race)
- fixed bug where too many colony ships were sometimes being built
- fixed bug where colony ships could sometimes load the wrong race of colonists for queued colonization targets
- when Colonization Automation is manual, automated colony ships no longer load colonists except for queued colonization targets
CHARACTERS
- better handling of imprisoned characters when reconquer colony (ensure properly removed from prisoners of previous empire)
- properly exclude imprisoned characters when determining defensive bonuses at colony (as shown in Troop Report screen)
- added extra tooltip descriptions for character traits Corrupt (Scientist) and Double Agent
MANUAL PLAY IMPROVEMENTS
- added action buttons for multi-selected ships: scrap and retire selected ships
- added new right-click mission for multi-selected ships: capture (when ships have capability)
AI IMPROVEMENTS
- now properly handle situation when empire was planning to build expensive planetary facility at a colony, but lost colony while saving up construction funds
GENERAL BUG FIXES
- now properly exclude ShipHulls_Art.xml file when not in art mode
- fixed occasional error messages relating to regional settings on non-English PCs
- fixed incorrect URL for .Net 6.0 installation
SOUND EFFECTS
- limit number of simultaneous sound effects of same type to avoid very high effect volume, especially when first zooming into a location
- further reduced simultaneous sound effects that can sometimes create loud bursts of sound
- added Assault Pod sound effect
- added shield strike and construction sound effects
- fixed weapon firing sound effects not playing unless weapon also had accompanying particle effect
MODDING IMPROVEMENTS
- added new Game Event features for story team
- now allow loading multiple XML data files per type to better support modding
- enabled IsPlayable flag in Races.xml file to better support modding. Note that races list in Start New Game screen does not scroll horizontally, so can currently only add 3-4 more races before disappear off right side of screen, but will add scroll support in future
- added better support for custom mod-loading through command-line arguments
- added extra checks with multi-file loading for mods, giving better feedback on data errors
- implemented better approach for resetting static base data (loaded from XML files) when start a new game in same session (no longer reload from files), thus better supporting modding
OTHER
- remove HighDPI aware registry flag for current user (no need for this as DW2 now handles this itself)
- ensure correct infantry image always used in research screen for troop research projects
- fixed scuttle button sometimes not working for single ships or bases
- fixed story events sometimes being generated in the wrong location (e.g. ancient debris fields at homeworld)
- fixed minor text formatting issues
- ensure creatures move away from stars if too close
- improved error reporting
- improved profiling to enable frame capture using RenderDoc
- improved error reporting in some situations
- properly clear room background when speak with independent colony for non-playable race
- capped maximum number of user-defined starting empires in Start New Game screen to 20
- fixed a typo regarding the Technocracy government
- Military Academy facilities are now 1 per Empire as originally intended
- refresh 'Continue Game' button tooltip with latest savegame when exit to main menu
- properly refresh empire territory path lines after load game
- fixed shift key sometimes not working when editing text
- reduced volume for construction sound effects
- fixed empires using independent flags
- fixed reputation increase from destroying pirate ships and bases
- fixed minor typo in game start text when have single additional colony
- corrected Kiadian typo in diplomatic research projects
- ensured proper game icon is shown in taskbar
- Added extra error reporting for some rendering-related crashes
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Distant Worlds 2 - Update v1.0.8.3
Wed, November 2
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/0d3040f1d6b8a6dc03905506abaa8a571f62d272_960x311.jpg)
“Pathfinder”
1.0.8.3 Official Update
This massive update takes a series of steps towards completing our current roadmap to both fix reported issues with Distant Worlds 2 but also to improve a variety of gameplay areas as part of ongoing post-release support.
Based on community feedback, over the course of two months of development for this update, we have significantly improved and in some areas redesigned Research, Diplomacy and Reputation, Subjugation and Wars, Colonization and Migration, Performance and Memory Management, User Interface, AI and Ship and Fleet Behavior.
Thanks to the generous work of composer / sound designer Jeff Dodson of rainfall.tv, we have also added new significantly improved and rebalanced sound effects for most components and weapons, explosions, etc. Jeff's trailer sound design work is heard in small projects like “Star Wars” and should help spice up combat among other things.
Finally, we’ve doubled the available empire flags and colors and added guidance on the main galaxy setup for which galaxy sizes are best suited to your computer hardware. We strongly recommend starting a new game with 1.0.8.3 in order to benefit from all the changes and improvements it has to offer compared to the last official update. We wish your empire success as you travel to Distant Worlds!
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PLEASE NOTE: .Net 6 is now required to run the game. Steam should start to install it automatically. If your Steam client does not start the install, please Exit Steam and try again. This should hopefully refresh the client and force it to do so.
If the prompt with .Net 6.0.5 doesn't appear, please download .Net from the link below. Then restart your PC:
.Net 6.0
DotNet Download: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-6.0.5-windows-x64-installer
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you still experience crashes, please try the new DXVK rendering option in the game settings. This can be found under "Rendering Mode", which can be switched from DirectX 11 to DXVK. DXVK should also be used together with SDR (rather than HDR) for best results. This will likely resolve many issues caused by driver bugs or incompatibilities. If you try this setting and the game does not launch, please note there is a command line option to switch back to DirectX 11. To use add /use-dx11 as a command-line argument to DistantWorlds2.exe
Detailed Changes in 1.0.8.3 (November 1st, 2022):
CRASH FIXES
- fixed game not starting for some players who had other software that improperly mapped the wrong versions of shared files (freetype.dll)
- fixed rare crash when determining jump path time to destination star system
- fixed rare crash when determining docking bay parking spot
- fixed rare crash when calculating docking position offset
- fixed rare crash when inserting ship into docking wait queue
- fixed crash that sometimes occurred when declaring war
- fixed crash when drawing ship weapon summary
- fixed crash when ship assigns exploration mission
- fixed crash when rendering background room for character
- fixed rare crash when drawing ship health summary
- fixed rare crash when unloading troops at colony
- fixed rare crash when fleet checks whether should invade colony
- fixed rare crash when displaying trade offer with independent colony locations
- fixed crash when determining random docking position for ship
- fixed crash when drawing empire economy
- fixed crash when showing some tour screens
START NEW GAME SCREEN
- in Start New Game screen added warning borders and tooltips to indicate when the largest galaxy sizes may cause performance issues on some systems, especially if played into the late game or without victory conditions.
- ensure player starting relation level for other empires (Start New Game screen) excludes pirate protection and selects correct trade treaty (RTA, LTA, FTA)
PERFORMANCE AND MEMORY MANAGEMENT
- significant performance improvements, especially for large late-game galaxies
- improved general memory management
- improved memory management when rendering character animations
- galaxy-level star drawing and some other rendering now uses instancing, improving rendering performance
- further improved rendering performance in Control Center lists, especially in large late-games
SOUND DESIGN
- Thanks to generous work by Jeff Dodson of rainfall.tv, we have added new significantly improved and rebalanced sound effects for most components and weapons, explosions, etc. Jeff's trailer sound design work is heard in small projects like “Star Wars” and should help spice up combat among other things.
DIPLOMACY AND REPUTATION
This area has had a comprehensive overhaul, both to fix reported issues but also to rebalance reputation and relationship modifiers (including the penalties for being stronger than your neighbors), how reputation interacts with relationship and colony happiness and how much reputation affects how empires see each other and how your people see their own empire.
We’ve also added the missing Subjugated Vassal relationship and expanded the role and feedback related to Ambassadors, which are needed for the more advanced treaty types and also improve the rate of improvement for positive long-term relations and accelerate the decay of negative relations when assigned to an empire.
Finally, a lot of work went into fixing issues related to how wars end and how willing the AI was to negotiate the ends of wars correctly. All of this should make Diplomacy more rewarding as a playstyle, but also significantly decrease problems related to diplomacy and reputation for more warlike factions.
Subjugated Vassals:
- empires that are losing war now much more likely to be willing to end the war, and even to become your subjugated vassal when losing badly
- added Subjugated Vassal diplomatic relation type (see Galactopedia for details: Game Concepts > Diplomacy - Treaty Types)
- clarified description of treaty trade item for Subjugated Vassal in Diplomacy Trade screen ('Offer to become Subjugated Vassal')
- tooltips on Peace and Subjugation trade items in diplomacy trade screen now include indication of value of extra incentive required when other faction wants additional inducement to end war
- ensure vassal tribute income properly shown in Projected column of Annual Income section in Economy screen
Diplomatic Strategy:
- high-level diplomatic strategy now pays more attention to overall situation for faction, not just one-on-one relations. Thus more likely to seek out allies against threatening neighbors, even when would not normally otherwise ally with faction.
- diplomatic strategy now also affects empire evaluation of neighboring strength. Concern about strength will be greater if their diplomatic strategy towards you is a negative one.
- preserve existing diplomatic treaty when matches current strategy for faction, even when evaluation drops below typical level for the treaty (e.g. advisor suggestions)
- now force immediate update of each faction's diplomatic strategy whenever conclude trade, change treaty, etc in diplomatic conversation screen
Pirate Wars:
- fixed bug where wars would start with pirate factions when they raid your colonies
- ensure capturing pirate base eliminates pirate faction (not just when destroy pirate base)
Diplomatic Reputation:
- capped maximum and minimum reputation levels
- adjusted soft cap to impact of reputation in diplomacy
- high reputation now also reduces envy factor from other empires ('We are envious of your huge strength and power')
- reputation impact from events is halved when above or below high or low thresholds, meaning that extreme reputation levels, once achieved, are slower to shift
- reputation factors on average now decay much more slowly, especially if your reputation is strongly positive or negative
- less concern over others' reputations when you and other faction both have positive or negative reputation levels, i.e. more concerned when other faction has opposite reputation to you as well as a significant reputation gap
- you can now gain positive reputation from additional actions such as releasing prisoners, signing new treaties, researching diplomacy techs, destroying hive ships and planet destroyers
- rebalanced all reputation impacts and decay rates
- no negative reputation impact from espionage against pirates
- diplomacy trend values update faster than previously. Reputation trend values update much faster than previously. This means that as your relationship or reputation change, it will take less time for other empires to notice and reflect that change in their relationship with you.
- honoring defense treaty by declaring war on aggressor no longer incurs war justification penalty or war grace period penalty ('too soon since last war')
- fixed bug when modifying empire reputation near minimum or maximum limits
- updated Empire Reputation Galactopedia article to include explanation of Slavery and Extermination colony population policies
- reduced overall impact of very good or very poor reputation on colony happiness
- once empire reputation goes over +10 or below -10 then has diminished impact on colony happiness
Diplomatic Relationships:
- updated values for long-term diplomacy effects for some treaty types to better balance diplomatic progress
- capped display of diplomacy trend values so that do not show misleadingly high or low values even when have fast-moving trend (trend magnitude never larger than target value)
- ensure clear some positive diplomacy values with other faction when they bombard, invade or destroy one of your colonies
- lowered soft cap for some diplomacy factors: relationship and beneficial treaties with friends and enemies
- fixed buggy display of diplomatic relation incident trend values when transition from positive to negative or vice versa
- ensure cancel treaties with other faction when they bombard, invade or destroy one of your colonies
- adjusted soft cap for some diplomatic factors: relationship with friends, relationship with enemies
Ambassadors:
- some high-level treaty types now require an ambassador to be assigned to the foreign capital before they will be accepted
- ambassadors now properly apply diplomacy bonus to modify evaluation of your empire by assigned faction (when at faction capital)
- the diplomacy screen now correctly shows the consolidated effect of any assigned ambassadors and your leader on a given faction
Trade and Negotiation:
- diplomacy trade panel adds new functionality to move view to trade items that are visible to your faction. Click 'eye' icon at right side of trade item
- bases available for trade in diplomacy trade screen now show as 'Unknown Base' when not visible to player
- ensure all techs valued properly in trade deal screen (none should be zero unless truly worthless to other faction)
- fixed tech trading sometimes excluding research projects that you do not have access to (e.g. projects that your tech tree has no path to, even though other faction has researched the project). Note that tech trading does properly exclude projects based on your tech level in a research area, but this fix now deliberately includes projects that you may not have a path to (when appropriate for your tech level). Note that this fix also applies to some other situations where you can acquire tech, e.g. when conquering an enemy colony, when using spies to steal tech.
Diplomatic Techs and Assimilation:
- colony population assimilation rates for specific races now improved by researching diplomacy projects in tech tree at rate of 10% per improved relationship point
Treaty Fixes:
- ensure Intelligence Sharing treaty now properly shares results of espionage missions with partners
- ensure Research treaty properly gives bonuses to each factions research speed
War Resolution:
- lowered threshold from war losses where an empire will consider ending a war (more likely to end war when losing badly)
- empires now more willing to offer incentives to end unwanted wars
- unhappiness from war weariness now applied to colonies with race and govt mitigation factors (mainly based on war weariness reduction), so that aggressive factions now have less unhappiness from war weariness and thus less negative impact from wars
- empires now more likely to honor minimum interval between wars with same faction
- vassal empires now include minimum interval between wars with same faction when considering whether to rebel against parent empire
- fixed bug where diplomatic incidents were being applied to wrong empire when declare war while still have Defense or Non-Aggression treaty
- fixed bug where offers to end war sometimes cannot be accepted
RESEARCH:
This is another area which benefited from a significant amount of development attention. Based on community feedback, we found that Random research in particular was not working as intended.
The intention was always that when choosing Random research, some techs or sub-trees could be missing from the research tree. This does not mean that they are absent from the game, but that they would need to be enabled through trade, espionage, exploration, salvage or conquest rather than just through research. We also found that some random paths were being incorrectly generated and thus required too many pre-requisites for some projects or made others available that should not have been. With this update, Random research issues should be resolved.
We also fixed a variety of other issues and began improving the research AI. More work in this area will come in the next series of updates.
- altered how research project prerequisites work: now often only require a subset of all the prerequisites for a project instead of all prerequisites as previously. This fixes the issue where race-specific techs added to the required prerequisite paths instead of just being a part of them.
- research project bonus requirement amounts now scale with galaxy size - larger galaxies have higher research bonus threshold requirements due to being easier to find the necessary research bonus locations
- fixed bug where research projects with fallback paths were sometimes not appearing on tech tree when should have
- now exclude race-specific tech from non-playable races when stealing or trading tech, or acquiring through other means (e.g. colony conquest)
- tweaked which research projects an empire can acquire through colony conquest
- tweaked which research projects are available for trade and stealing (spy missions): spies can now perform repeated steal tech missions for same project even when visible to their empire
- set default maximum concurrent research projects to 1 in empire policy
- fixed some research projects remaining invisible after steal tech spy mission or acquire through other non-standard means
- fixed bug where minimum path count for some research project prerequisites were defaulting to one, which was incorrectly reducing the number of prerequisites that needs to first be researched
- fixed research projects sometimes incorrectly showing up on tech tree when no parent paths (when using randomized research)
- fixed higher level research projects sometimes improperly being researchable even when have no path to them from base of tech tree
- fixed some research projects not generating with all required prerequisite paths
- ensure pirate factions exclude some research projects at game start that they value lower (colonization, facilities, diplomacy), thus not being available to trade or steal from them
- now allow AI to initiate research projects even when uses reserved spending (colony ships, wonders) when there are no projects in the queue and the project initiation cost is relatively low
- slightly reduced AI research priority for diplomacy techs
- slightly reduced AI research priority for some planetary facilities, especially research facilities
MIGRATION, COLONIZATION AND COLONY POPULATION POLICY
- ensure migrating populations honor colonization minimum suitability level from empire policy, i.e. race does not migrate to a colony unless suitability is +20 or better (default level)
- automated colony ship construction now considers preferred colonization race (suitability) and location of colonization target when determining where to build new colony ship (first choice is closest colony to target with preferred colonization race)
- added further improvements when selecting construction locations for automated colony ships, especially when handling multiple simultaneous manually-queued colonization targets
- fixed bug where colony ships could sometimes continually load and unload colonists but never colonize a target, especially when have many queued colonization targets and many colony ships
- reduced colonies constantly rebelling when using enslave or exterminate policy. However note that using these policies will increase unrest of affected races at your colonies, likely eventually leading to rebellion
- fixed issue where constantly rebelling colony with population set to exterminate would push population above 30 million, thus never completing extermination
- ensure colony is removed when all of its population is exterminated (population policy)
FLEETS AND SHIPS
- tweaked default fleet templates: larger Attack and Invade fleets
- ships added to fleets via topup now check whether have enough fuel to reach fleet, if not then first refuel at nearby location before proceeding to form-up with fleet
- automated generation of invasion fleets now also checks whether have enough existing troops or spare troop maintenance to supply troops from army template for new fleet
- when a ship changes fleets it now auto-cancels any escort missions for old fleet (escorting fleet capital ships)
- ensure ships that get stuck inside stars/planets/etc can always properly extricate themselves without other factors overriding that behavior
- automated construction ships now more willing to repair abandoned ships and bases when no other bases to build
- Capture ship missions now assigned and retained even when no assault pods currently available (cool down timer)
- now indicate unavailable assault pod status in Selection Panel and Weapons Report window when ship is assigned a Capture mission
- when a colony is invaded and conquered by another faction then non-military ships from the previous empire clear any missions at the colony (when two empires are still at war)
- fighters onboard carriers or bases no longer affected by location effects (storms, etc)
- ensure fleets that are manually assigned to attack enemy fleets at same location always carry out mission, even when not at war
- reduced default ratio of military ships not in fleets (empire policy)
- slightly reduced number of raid fleets for empire
- changed default engagement range for Invasion Fleets from 50% Fuel Range to Nearby
- mining ships now more careful to select mining targets within fuel range, including whether inside nebulae clouds
- troop transports in invasion fleets that are invading an enemy colony now attempt to better coordinate assault pod launch (troop drop) so that close together instead of piecemeal landing. Also indicate when waiting for extra invasion forces in mission description in Selection Panel
- fixed bug where a ships intercept weapons were sometimes incorrectly being used to bombard an enemy colony even when only assigned attack mission against colony (not bombard)
CONSTRUCTION AND SHIP DESIGN
- fixed Build Order screen sometimes building wrong design for role
- slightly adjusted construction balance for military ship types: generally fewer escorts and more larger ships
- increased military ship building levels
- ensured default design templates for defensive bases include Ion Defense components
- fixed ships not always being upgraded when research new tech
- ensure Energy To Fuel converter component works properly
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added new button to Population Policy screen: apply policy to all colonies of this type (e.g. Marshy Swamp, Volcanic, Sandy Desert, etc)
- enabled shift-click to multi-select range of designs in Designs List screen
- Control Center now pauses list updates while hovering over list items (list items retain order) to avoid having to deal with list changes while trying to take a list action
- now immediately updates right-click mission for hovered item when select an item via hotkey (no need to move mouse), e.g. allow immediate right-click attack of hovered enemy target when select fleet via hotkey
- made it clearer in user interface when undertaking an action that will very negatively affect your reputation: Bombardment, Slavery and Extermination colony policies, declaring war in wrong situation (insufficient justification, too soon since last war, existing Non Aggression treaty, existing Defense treaty), invading independent colonies, invading colonies when not at war, destroying colonies
- now show fleet jump range for selected fleet in galaxy view as dashed orange circle (in addition to fuel range)
- ambassador contributions to diplomacy are now properly called out in the diplomacy tab
- indicate when characters drawn in list items are transferring to new location (transparent image with tooltip explanation)
- immediately update system view summary (bottom-middle of screen) when double-click item to change view
- added explanation in tooltip of action button when cannot build mining station or other base at location due to missing active design
- fixed mined and known locations amounts sometimes being out-of-date in Resources list
- fixed missing callout lines and tooltips in summary panel (bottom-middle of screen)
- fixed height of text panel in Tour screen sometimes being too short
- fixed some scrollable text panels missing their vertical scroll bar when text is higher than panel
- ensure empires have different colors and flags even when multiple empires of same race
- doubled the number of available empire flags
- fixed non-clipped rendering artifacts in Start New Game screen
- made galaxy nebula clouds more visible
- fixed some text problems with fullscreen messages
COLONY MANAGEMENT
- slightly adjusted planetary facility building levels, colony population and development should be larger before some facilities are built
- reduced population level for building a small spaceport at a colony in default policy settings
- increased target tax rate for medium-sized colonies to +20 (from +10) in default policy settings to encourage faster growth
- ensure colonies always have proper resource stock levels for building bases and ships
- avoid using reserved spending to build planetary facilities when automation is Suggest. Instead wait until have funds then suggest to player
EXPLORATION
- ensure range for discovering lost colony exceeds exploration range so that exploration ships always discover
- fixed new bug where exploration ships were sometimes stopping exploration beyond home system
- slightly reduced tech level of ships in most debris fields
- ensure abandoned ships and bases do not use excessive race-specific tech
GAME EVENTS
- ensure plagues and disasters do not strike same colony too often (no simultaneous plagues, minimum interval between)
- extended Game Events so that can have multiple filters for TriggerRaceIds and NonTriggerRaceIds
- moved AllConditionsMustBeMet flag on Game Event and Actions (no longer part of Conditions list)
- fixed minor text issue with some Hive threat messages
- fixed minor text layout issues for some ruin discovery messages
IN-GAME EDITOR
- changing a star name in game editor now also changes the corresponding system name on the galaxy map
MODDING SUPPORT
- now support overriding loaded data items by Id value for all XML file types (Races, Research Project Definitions, Ship Hulls, Troop Definitions, etc) based on additional data files that start with the same name (as a prefix). IDs should still be unique across all files.
OTHER
- fixed time to transfer character to new location sometimes being excessively long
- ensure message filter empire flag images are properly loaded
- ensure pre-expanded empire colonies (at game start) have good suitability levels
- added setting to Game Settings screen for opt-in/out of auto-sending anonymized error reporting
- auto-delete game settings to ensure new default policy settings are applied in new games
- ensure SavedGames folder exists before using Continue Game button
- enabled Sentry error reporting
- included all files in win-x64 folder that may fix freetype.dll error issues some had when launching 1.0.6.4
DATA
- various data file fixes, balance tweaks and updates, including some buffs for the Boskara and a fix for the Zenox starting with far too large a research bonus (the +20% was supposed to be only on their ancient homeworld, if you can find it)
- rebalanced some government modifiers to make certain government types less corrupt and unhappy to ease economic challenges
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Distant Worlds 2 - Update v1.0.8.6
Tue, 6 December 2022
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/0d3040f1d6b8a6dc03905506abaa8a571f62d272.jpg)
Changes in 1.0.8.6 (November 25th, 2022):
This new official update includes some very important bug fixes and performance improvements as well as further improvements across a wide range of gameplay areas. It also allows you for the first time, using the Game Editor, to switch the empire you are playing during the middle of a game.
You can download the update here (https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/DistantWorlds2-UpdateComp-v1.0.8.6.zip)
CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when reviewing fleet escort ships
- fixed rare crash while fleet performs patrol mission
- fixed rare crash while querying display adapter
- fixed rare crash when resolving ship jump path location
- fixed potential crash when use faulty string formatting placeholders in colony event descriptions
- fixed rare crash when determining jump exit point
- fixed crash when editing resources at planet in Game Editor
- fixed rare crash when ship escorts another ship
- fixed rare crash when reviewing fleet lead ship
- fixed crash when loading character animations
- fixed rare crash when making research breakthrough
- fixed crash when calculating construction yard wait time
- fixed crash when ship enters hangar
- fixed crash when rendering exploration section header
PERFORMANCE
- improved performance, especially in large battle scenes
FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- reduced delays when carriers (and fleets) are waiting for fighters to board before jumping
- improved ship collision avoidance to better allow missions where target is close to planet or other large body
- improved fleets investigating and clearing dangerous locations: now better focussed on priority locations for colonization, research and mining
FUEL TANKERS
- improved fuel tanker evaluation of when to refuel fleet ships versus load more fuel: more likely to refuel fleet ships, even when have to wait for them to exit their current jump
COLONIZATION
- automated Colony Ships no longer pre-load colonists for non-queued colonization targets when target does not meet minimum suitability threshold defined in empire policy. This eliminates repeated load/unload of colonists in some situations
- fixed bug where maximum colonization range was sometimes being applied incorrectly, improperly excluding some colonization targets
- automated colonization now more willing to colonize independent colonies even when have unsuitable race
EXPLORATION
- exploration ships now better at prioritizing planets and moons before asteroids when exploring a location
- ensure exploration countdown always reset between exploration targets, especially when performing Explore System mission
- ensure correct message shown when investigate ship that explodes
ABANDONED SHIPS AND BASES
- ensure construction ship repairing abandoned ships or bases now take ownership of ship when complete, even when other ships are nearby
DANGEROUS LOCATIONS
- improved logic to review and remove Dangerous Locations where threats are no longer present
- now indicate dangerous locations in additional lists, e.g. Abandoned Ships and Bases, thus helping player to avoid queuing construction/repair at locations with threats present
RESEARCH
- changed research project prerequisite path minimum count to default to 1 instead of total prerequisite path count (can override with PrerequisiteProjectsMinimumPathCount)
- empires now less likely to crash research higher level research projects (instead use money for other items)
- improved research project selection in various areas
DIPLOMACY AND EMPIRE REPUTATION
- when an empire is vassalized it will immediately end all wars with other empires unless those other empires are already at war with subjugating empire
- ensure diplomacy trade offers always exclude special locations where abandoned ships or bases have already been claimed by other empires
- updated some empire reputation incident amounts and decay rates
SLAVERY
- slavery population policy now properly adds to colony unhappiness ('We are enraged at your enslavement of our population')
- increased unhappiness impact on other colonies from slavery and extermination population policies at any colony ('ENSLAVED RACE are unhappy being part of our RACE empire')
- slavery population policy now severely slows population growth and assimilation
CONSTRUCTION AND REPAIR
- fixed bug where bases built at independent colonies could not be retrofitted unless the colony had adequate resources
- increased range at which bases and colonies will auto-construct/repair damaged or incomplete ships
- altered automated ship and base construction to give higher priority to initial research station over additional exploration ships and military ships
-
FACILITIES
- AI now properly also considers income increase from improved quality when determining whether to build terraforming facilities at a colony
USER INTERFACE
- Enemy Targets list filter options now show correct list items even when warring empires change (e.g. a war starts or ends)
- ensure Mining Stations list shows mining stations at locations with no known resources when sorting by priority
- ensure system summary (bottom-middle of screen) refreshes when zoom to selected ship
- fixed bug where tour window was sometimes not properly displayed
EMPIRE COLORS AND FLAGS
- improved empire color selection to minimize similarity between empires
- fixed bug where empire colors could sometimes be white (should only be for independent colonies)
- changed Flag selection dropdown in Start New Game screen to display available flags in grid layout instead of vertical list
GAME EDITOR AND TESTING
- added ability to play as any standard empire in the game. Can switch player empire in Game Editor (Edit Empire > switch button). This is included for our own testing to help us improve the AI, but you may also find it a fun option. If you spot a problem with the AI decision-making while using this, please do report it to us.
- ensured that Suppress All Popups game setting always works, even for initial pirate encounter. With this change and usine Rule in Absence and the "Always Investigate" exploration policy settings, fully automated games without interruption should now be possible.
SOUND
- ensured sound effect volume always applies for button clicks, etc, even in main menu
DATA
- Reduced costs for Diplomacy tech projects
- Corrected some typos in game events
- Added additional late game research paths from Haakonish and Zenox unique weapons
- Corrected a research bonus issue with the Koloros Medical facility
OTHER
- fixed debris fields often being generated at home planet
- fixed Hive ships sometimes not mining fuel properly
- added missing automation setting in race policy files
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Distant Worlds 2 - Aurora Update announcement
Mon, 27 February 2023
(https://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/99dc0b6d5b4e569413b001a915408520fa645c33.jpg)
Hi everyone,
We have some exciting news for you: tomorrow, February 28th, on our channel there will be a special streaming event with Erik Rutins, the executive producer of Distant Worlds 2. Get a reminder here.
During the stream, Erik will be previewing the upcoming Aurora update, releasing on the March 2nd, which brings new features and improvements to the game. He will also be discussing the future plans for Distant Worlds 2 and what players can expect in the months to come.
This is an amazing opportunity to get an exclusive preview of the new update for Distant Worlds 2, straight from the source. You won't want to miss it!
The streaming event will be taking place on February 28th, so be sure to tune in and join us for what promises to be an incredible showcase of Distant Worlds 2.
See you there!
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Distant Worlds 2: Factions - Ikkuro & Dhayut out now
Thu Mar 16, 2023
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/14a47622cee8888924bca2382d4e558d7804f549.jpg)
Welcome explorers,
The day has finally come. Ikkuro & Dhayut, the two new playable factions for Distant Worlds 2, have arrived in the Galaxy.
It is now your choice whether to join them, ally with them, or fight them.
https://youtu.be/Fkfxk-BxOVM
The Ikkuro are focused on happiness, growth and peaceful harmony. Their self-repairing ships are a mix of technology and biology and they are able to use their understanding of the various galactic biomes as well as unique terraforming facilities to achieve unprecedented levels of habitability.
The Dhayut are master deceivers and paranoid schemers. Their fast ships bring mistrust and slavery wherever they are found as their ability to infiltrate other societies allows them to manipulate other empires in ways that others cannot hope to achieve.
Each of these new factions comes with a new unique government type, unique conditional events and their own special storyline and unique story locations, adding to the possible exploration events and to your knowledge of galactic lore. For full details on the new faction features, see our previous announcement here (https://www.slitherine.com/news/distant-worlds-2-ikkuro-and-dhayut-dlc-out-on-march-16th).
In case you have missed Erik’s stream on the two new factions of Distant Worlds 2, don’t worry. You can rewatch the stream here:
https://youtu.be/iYNQqlbyovk
But that’s not all. Together with the DLC, we are releasing a new official update, free for all owners. We will continue to update, fix and improve the base game as time goes on, including improving the existing base game factions to have more differentiation, simliar to the new DLC factions. For those of you who want to know every detail of the 1.1.2.4 update, a detailed changelog is available at this link (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Uploads/News/Changes_in_1.1.2.4_130323.pdf).
While you play with the Ikkuro & Dhayut DLC, the team will be busy at work making Distant Worlds a bigger, better experience for all of you.
The Galaxy lives on.
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Distant Worlds 2 - Hyperspeed Update out on May 26th
Mon, 22 May 2023
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/39688059/912e90d6e1d67b5c3943083a1743e9d7a42b962c.jpg)
Welcome back explorers,
We have some exciting news for you: tomorrow, May 23rd at 01.00pm BST, on our channel there will be a special streaming event with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2. Get a reminder here (http://www.twitch.tv/slitherinetv/schedule?segmentID=20935abc-3b5c-46b8-9c75-5b45fa8c4daf).
During the stream, Erik will be previewing the upcoming Hyperspeed update, releasing on the May 26th, which brings fixes and improves many long-standing issues with gameplay and system compatibility.
This is an amazing opportunity to get an exclusive preview of the new update for Distant Worlds 2, straight from the source. You won't want to miss it!
The streaming event will be taking place on May 23rd at 01.00pm BST, so be sure to tune in and join us for what promises to be an incredible showcase of Distant Worlds 2.
See you there.
The Galaxy lives on
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Distant Worlds 2 - Hyperspeed Update out now
Fri, 26 May 2023
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/fd40942d5e062c7e1e7b07695aedd7e184a8ae4c.jpg)
Welcome back explorers,
The wait is finally over. The Hyperspeed update, the new major update for Distant Worlds 2, is out now and ready for you to explore.
Download the new Hyperspeed update here (https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/DistantWorlds2-MultiUpdateComp-v1.1.4.4.zip).
This update brings fixes and improves many long-standing issues with gameplay and system compatibility, but the biggest change is a massive increase in game performance, especially with regard to simulating the "living galaxy" in Distant Worlds 2. With these new additions, players will be able to experience Distant Worlds 2 like never before.
But that's not all. For those of you who want to know every detail of the Hyperspeed update, a detailed changelog is available
link (https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/whatsnew.pdf).
This document outlines all the changes made in the update, from major new features to minor bug fixes.
And if you missed Erik's stream on what's new in Distant Worlds 2, don't worry. You can rewatch the stream
https://youtu.be/1vS8N4tIEm8
During the stream, Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, previewed the Hyperspeed update and discussed the future of the game.
So what are you waiting for? Get ready to experience the ultimate version of Distant Worlds 2 and take your empire to new heights.
The galaxy lives on
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Distant Worlds 2 - DLC & Update Announcement
Thu, 3 August 2023
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/b37afae303facd9d3fa19f93da469cad41e75272.jpg)
Distant Worlds 2: Factions - Quameno & Gizureans
The Galaxy Expands! The second Distant Worlds 2 expansion brings two new playable factions – the introverted puzzle-solving Quameno and the numberless and ruthless Gizureans!
Distant Worlds 2: Factions - Quameno & Gizurean will be out on September 7th.
The Quameno mostly prefer to be left alone to focus on their research and their societies are often organized like war-time economies, but with a focus on research instead of military matters. They value puzzle-solving and the discovery of new knowledge above almost everything else, certainly more than distractions such as diplomacy, war or espionage. They also have a natural aptitude when it comes to energy technologies and because of the abundance of energy in their ships, stations and cities, they use energy fields where many others might use solid materials.
Their governments are typically based on a Geniocracy, which uses unique facilities such as the Enigma Maze to determine which are the most worthy to lead and the Transcendence Hub, a wonder which will trigger a singularity of sorts, which will free them from their physical limits and allow research to continue through eternity.
The Gizureans are legion, with an incredible reproduction rate, along with a ruthless focus on gaining and consuming enough resources to keep their burgeoning populations happy enough to stave off their tendency towards tribal strife. They also have a mysterious past, as the hive mind they once had was broken and a more limited shared consciousness is all that remains. They engineer their ships through partially organic processes, which allows them to be tougher, but their real focus is in their numbers. Gizureans tend to focus on numbers and tactics based on quantity in space combat, specializing in many smaller ships and large quantities of hive starfighters for their ships, stations and colony defense with the earliest access of any faction to planetary starfighter bases.
Each of these new factions also comes with their own special storyline and unique story locations, adding to the possible exploration events and to your knowledge of galactic lore. The Quameno will give you some additional insights on the Ancient galaxy and some of the mysteries the Ancient Guardians left behind, while the history of the Gizureans is connected with that of the Hive threat as well as the ancient enemy known as the Shakturi!
Distant Worlds 2 - Discovery Update
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/df8688cc1518cca0a2cca167c6bfe453a1c85c86.jpg)
But that’s not all, we have some other exciting news for you: Thursday August 10th at 04.30pm BST, on our channel there will be a special streaming event with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2. Get a reminder here. https://www.twitch.tv/slitherinetv/schedule?segmentID=31e197fa-c840-477b-b12b-7da90b00964f
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/efbca3752129c1b7361f615f9ac0d615b946e922.jpg)
During the stream, Erik will be previewing the upcoming Discovery update, releasing on August 22nd, which brings fixes and improves many long-standing issues with gameplay and system compatibility. In addition, the new update will bring new contents to the game.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/def48c3f7ce33e3da2cc692124353119cb70a2b5.jpg)
This is an amazing opportunity to get an exclusive preview of the new update for Distant Worlds 2, straight from the source. You won't want to miss it!
The streaming event will be taking place on August 10th at 04.30pm BST, so be sure to tune in and join us for what promises to be an incredible showcase of Distant Worlds 2.
See you there.
The Galaxy lives on
Distant Worlds 2: Factions - Quameno and Gizureans
(https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/2409480/header.jpg)
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Distant Worlds 2 - Discovery Update out now
Tue, 22 August 2023
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/18526168715833de0b27101b26d59ecef2d9dd89.jpg)
Welcome back explorers,
The day has finally come. The Discovery update, the latest major update for Distant Worlds 2, is out now and ready for you to discover.
Download the new Discovery update here (https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/DistantWorlds2-MultiUpdateComp-v1.1.6.5.zip).
This update brings fixes and improves many long-standing issues with gameplay and system compatibility, but the biggest changes are the addition of Ancients Guardian Vaults and the Pirate Cruisers, and the expansion of the Hive Threat. With these new additions and improvements, players will be able to experience Distant Worlds 2 like never before.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/def48c3f7ce33e3da2cc692124353119cb70a2b5.jpg)
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/efbca3752129c1b7361f615f9ac0d615b946e922.jpg)
But that's not all. For those of you who want to know every detail of the Discovery update, a detailed changelog is available here (https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/whatsnew.pdf). This document outlines all the changes made in the update, from major new features to minor bug fixes.
In case you didn't have the chance to watch Erik's stream on Distant Worlds 2 and its future, you can take a look at it here:
https://youtu.be/-9JGlAeLsBA
During the stream, Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, previewed the Discovery update and talked about the new factions invading the galaxy and the future of the game.
So don't waste any more time. Get ready to experience the latest version of Distant Worlds 2 and discover a new galaxy.
The Galaxy lives on
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Distant Worlds 2: Factions - Development Blog #1: The Quameno
Fri, 25 August 2023
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/0a07baf0132f6eaf8b74519f46a10b26ff31cabd.jpg)
The Quameno are the galaxy’s greatest introverts. They prefer to be left alone to focus on their research and their societies are often organized in a way that’s equivalent to a war-time economy, except it is focused on research instead of military matters.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/ebc336fcebf8e3451327f155a6098c7fdc883fde.gif)
They value puzzle-solving and the discovery of new knowledge above almost everything else, certainly more than distractions such as diplomacy, war or espionage. They also have a natural aptitude when it comes to energy technologies and because of the abundance of energy in their ships, stations and cities, they use energy fields where many others might use solid materials.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/e5464b3efab591aea12305b3992adb8fcaac5a31.jpg)
They often follow a government type called a Geniocracy, where only the most intelligent can lead. The Quameno can build unique facilities such the Enigma Maze to determine which are most suited to rise in their Geniocracy and the Transcendence Hub, a late game wonder which will trigger a singularity of sorts, freeing them from their physical limits and allow them to research in peace through eternity.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/73205f7088dbdd9666aefe2f6dc489c0fa841499.jpg)
Playing as the Quameno will give you some additional insights on the Ancient galaxy and some of the mysteries the Ancient Guardians left behind, in the form of the new Ancient Guardian Vaults. The Quameno storyline gives you the opportunity to find and open these vaults more quickly than any other faction, if you so choose.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/fb3166c11294ea7a0f455616266ad56fa501dc00.jpg)
Quameno victory conditions encourage you to complete entire tech trees and some of their special events along with the new Repeatable Tech system and their unique Transcendence Vault facility mean that the reward is worth the effort!
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/52c249e1e76df19a802888ca14e11d68212679ae.jpg)
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/307ab52dd65a394dd6e7ee79db7a14cd548f4c27.jpg)
- Geniocracy Government starts with better Research Labs and provides the largest research bonus of all government types, at the expense of other areas, including being unable to fund bonus colony growth. A Geniocracy also has the option for additional benefits whenever a research breakthrough or research critical failure happens. In the case of crash research, you can “spend” a scientist to immediately complete the research project. In the case of a critical research failure, you can “spend” a scientist to cancel the failure and crash the project instead.
- The Quameno are the most gifted researchers in the galaxy, though their single-minded focus also means that they are limited when it comes to concurrent research.
- Additional bonuses when they find new research locations or build new research stations
- Some temporary penalties due to distraction when treaties are signed or populations are unassimilated, preventing the Quameno from focusing as fully as they are normally able on their research puzzles
- Novacore Reactors, the best reactor in the game, along with Bubble Shields which have the highest Shield Resistance of all shield types
- The Transcendence Hub, an end-game victory condition wonder which allows the Quameno to transcend their physical forms
- Larger Research Stations than other factions may build
- Special exclusive Leader and Scientist Traits focused on Research
- Special conditional events Alien Distractions, Integration Studies, Puzzle Solved, Building the Future, A Piece of the Puzzle and The Answer reward them for thematic play
- Their unique story gives them an advantage when it comes to finding the new Ancient Guardian Vaults scattered throughout the galaxy and recovering the knowledge and artifacts within.
The Galaxy lives on
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Distant Worlds 2: Factions - Development Blog #2: The Gizureans
Thu, 31 August 2023
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/53daba458caee3640cdfecae2d6e7d0917754145.jpg)
The Gizureans are legion, with an incredible reproduction rate, along with a ruthless focus on gaining and consuming enough resources to keep their burgeoning populations happy enough to stave off their tendency towards tribal strife. They also have a mysterious past, as the hive mind they once had was broken and a more limited shared consciousness is all that remains (though players who choose to may still play as a Hive Mind).
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/08a3d80dbc8778d837b4a9f2d3c686dbe9255c81.gif)
They engineer their ships through partially organic processes, which allows them to be tougher, but their real focus is in their numbers. Gizureans tend to focus on numbers and tactics based on quantity in space combat, specializing in many smaller ships and large quantities of hive starfighters for their ships, stations and colony defense with the earliest access of any faction to planetary starfighter bases.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/f0797868a9c60745fb3d3264233f655a25ce87de.jpg)
While Gizureans themselves are relatively poor scientists, their talent for thoroughly disassembling and reverse engineering anything they find or capture means that it is possible to keep up in the technological race through conquest and salvage.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/9e5a3a012f4152003add7fd9f8080d68384e2d32.jpg)
The history of the Gizureans is connected with that of the Hive threat as well as the ancient enemy known as the Shakturi! The Gizurean storyline will explain the origins of the Hive and why the Gizureans are no longer, by default, a full Hive Mind.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/913f76181524180d0a071f1fb7450d92d4ade1b6.jpg)
The Gizurean victory conditions encourage numbers, growth and conquest.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/020ced61a90f62f6cceb973f990e9456ddff13b8.jpg)
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/21bd305a9792981dad95c385f7a9eb30d7983afb.jpg)
- Cell Hegemony government type is a form of limited shared consciousness, which includes some of the benefits and fewer of the disadvantages of a full hive mind. Starts with better sensors and command control, more inspiring characters and a generally reduced rate of luxury resource needs.
- Excellent at boarding combat and gain extra bonuses from salvaging and retiring captured ships.
- Swarm Targeting systems make their ships more accurate the more ships there are in a fleet.
- Hive Hangars and Hex Armor allow them to build and repair starfighters more quickly and cover their ships with partially organic armor that takes less space and is stronger than normal alloys.
- Hive Fighter Bases are available to defend their planets from the very early game.
- Internecine Tribal Conflicts can hold them back at times and they will need to supplement their slower research through reverse engineering and conquest.
- Larger Carriers.
- Special exclusive Leader and General traits focused on improving their collective consciousness and increasing the size and resiliency of their armies.
- Special conditional events, such as Waste Nothing and The Scouring, give them extra bonuses when retiring ships or conquering planets. The Rivalry event means that their characters periodically engage in power struggles to eliminate the weak and Breeding World allows them to choose to boost their own growth rate further by using other species as food.
The Galaxy lives on
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Distant Worlds 2 - Fleet Update out on November 13th
Tue Nov 07, 2023
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/9dd565c4bf7e089cbe1dcde458679e4848047658.jpg)
Welcome back explorers,
Some great news has just arrived in the Galaxy: today, November 7th at 16.00 GMT, on our channel there will be a special streaming event with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2. Get a reminder here (https://www.twitch.tv/slitherinetv/schedule?segmentID=58bf7419-3802-4967-b30c-9bcc0e83492c).
During the stream, Erik will be previewing the upcoming Fleet update, releasing on the November 13th, which includes many improvements across all areas of the game, but focuses most on the area of improving fleet and ship behavior in almost every way.
This is an amazing opportunity to get an exclusive preview of the new update for Distant Worlds 2, straight from the source. You won't want to miss it!
The streaming event will be taking place on November 7th at 16.00 GMT, so be sure to tune in and join us for this special event.
See you there.
The Galaxy lives on
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/4582121bf2f990b84535b0b1e1b5b50146ecf441.jpg)
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Distant Worlds 2 - Fleet Update Development Blog #1
Wed, 8 November 2023
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/4bedde6083ad92b8285df6ed499a93a44b10e67b.jpg)
Hi everyone,
Since the release of Distant Worlds 2, we have been working diligently both to resolve reported issues with the game as well as make consistent improvements and feature additions through a series of free updates. The most recent was the “Discovery” update in early September, which came along with the Gizurean and Quameno DLC.
Since then, we’ve been working on a new official update for you all, which we are calling the “Fleet” update. We have also been working on our next major expansion, the Return of the Shakturi, which will for the first time add a proper end game crisis to Distant Worlds 2 in 2024.
The “Fleet” update will release on November 13th and will be our last expected official update for 2023. It includes many improvements across all areas of the game, but focuses most on the area of improving fleet and ship behavior in almost every way. We’ve heard the feedback that there were still frustrations with how fleets and ships responded to certain circumstances, especially where manual orders and automation interact.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/d84acef883c2667e45db22ecd142e4f5404b1a00.jpg)
It also brings along a bunch of crash fixes, performance improvements and UI improvements, but I will focus this article mainly on the fleet and ship improvements. We had made many improvements to fleet and ship behavior over time, but it became clear that we needed a deeper dive in this area to make sure we were able to fully resolve the remaining reported issues. This turned out to be a major endeavour which took two months of development time as we went through every fleet or ship behavior-related issue in our backlog. The result is that fleets that behave much better for all manual/automated playstyle choices and also for the AI empires.
While investigating Fleet Movement, we resolved a number of issues which could cause movement orders to not be completed in a timely fashion, cause problems with ship collisions and fleet formations, or result in excessive short range jumps or jumps inside planetary bodies.
When looking at Fleet Engagement issues, we resolved bugs that could cause fleets to sometimes attack targets beyond their engagement range, or cause them to not break off attacks before moving well beyond their engagement range. Ships now are also better at considering all their weapons when deciding on their optimal attack range. We also resolved issues where fleets that were preparing or regrouping would sometimes wait too long before progressing their attack mission, even if combat was already underway and fleets are more intelligent about deciding how many of their ships they really need to take on a specific target.
There were various cases where Capture missions could fail. We improved the logic around this and made the assault strength of fleets and ships more visible, to make it obvious when a fleet or ship was able to take on a Capture mission.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/658c2d6241dcf63ab35b34f14aa97d438f589483.jpg)
Many issue reports involved cases where fleets were not choosing strategic targets as well as they should or not being as responsive to player queued targets as we would like. This general area took up much of our time. We addressed these issues from various angles and fleets are now much more responsive to player queued targets as well as more intelligent when automated in choosing their own targets. Fleets will now pay more attention to refueling to extend their attack range and not get unnecessarily distracted with other lower priority targets. There were also some cases where fleet targets in hyperspace could cause odd behavior – those have been resolved.
We also found an instance where ships that were in fleets were not using the full tactical logic to evaluate when they could take on targets individually, which could lead to some unfortunate kamikaze-style attacks – also now resolved. We also found an issue that could incorrectly trigger the fleet retreat logic, causing fleets to become much more indecisive and reassign targets too often in certain situations. That issue could affect both the tactical and strategic levels and has been fixed.
Another complaint was the situation where an enemy fleet was incoming to a friendly system, but an automated defense fleet might choose to take on another target of opportunity and leave the system. That will no longer happen if the defense fleet knows an enemy fleet is on the way to their location.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/ed5b88a1213cc91490db8f9b3cb9da57d3374980.jpg)
Invasion fleets and invasions also got an overhaul, to improve their ability to coordinate with attack fleets instead of embarking on invasions on their own and to make sure they were more responsive to invasion needs rather than focusing too much on loading and unloading troops within the empire.
Automated fleet formation and organization had some remaining issues which could cause fleets to not correctly match their fleet templates or cause fleets to become more strung out over time. There were various causes for this, all of which have been resolved. These fixes help keep fleets together better and keep unwanted ships out of fleets.
Fleet and ship refueling, including fuel tankers, has always been a complex area. We’ve made more improvements to fuel tanker behavior especially, to make sure that retrofits won’t cause refueling issues, that fuel tankers will coordinate with each other when choosing which is best positioned to refuel a fleet and that they will better avoid dangerous locations when keeping up with and refueling the fleets they are attached to. Fuel tankers will no longer seek to refuel ships that are currently on an attack mission, to better avoid danger, but they will refuel them before and after that mission.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/a1eb859c2abda63acdefc64271dd82d7348128d1.jpg)
Some non-military ships were still being careless about certain dangerous locations, especially those with ancient hostile bases. They are now much more aware of the threat and will avoid it. Colonization ships also had some remaining interactions that could cause less than optimal choices and those are now resolved both for manual and queued semi-automated colonization.
Finishing up the fleet and ship improvements, we found that in certain cases the empire logic would not update its knowledge quickly enough after a new world or mining stations was captured, leading the invading/attacking fleets and ships to have a long trip back to another location to refuel when they should have refueled on the spot. By forcing an update of the empire logic when such events happen, we should no longer see that issue.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/91f0011e293b1137f4a415385cbcda9a85962c4a.jpg)
I’ll also note that in related UI improvements, we now allow ship multi-select for all civilian ships as well and when you re managing your manual designs or troops, manually upgrading a design will now automatically disable Auto-Upgrading for that ship hull and manually setting troop garrisons will now automatically disable auto-garrison for the colony. We also fixed the click-through issue which could sometimes unintentionally assign an order to a selected ship or fleet when right clicking on the navigation panel in the Research screen.
We finally found and fixed the rare issue that could cause a stack of waiting messages to suddenly expire and be wiped from existence and we fixed the message spam that could happen when you destroy a pirate faction.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/39f6a3c855b584f4ed9fe9c2ab20c4e9f7d3bb9f.jpg)
A few last important improvements include that automated troop recruitment now focuses on recruiting one troop at a time on a given world, completing recruitment of any existing troop before queuing a new one, thus minimizing sudden economic swings. We also fixed an issue that could cause only the most recent repeatable tech improvement to apply for certain techs and added the ability to abandon a colony. We also improved the AI for some population policies, mainly Resettle, which helps reduce the burden on the player and improves the play of the AI.
Finally, we have made a number of improvements to the base game data and events as well as including some fixes for the two DLCs we’ve released to date. Please note that the data and event fixes will only be available when starting a new game.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/4582121bf2f990b84535b0b1e1b5b50146ecf441.jpg)
We hope the Fleet update will greatly improve your enjoyment of Distant Worlds 2! We are proceeding with work on the Shakturi expansion as well as another official update for Q1 2024, which will include our first two updated base game factions (the Humans and the Mortalen, with the Boskara and Zenox following soon thereafter).
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Distant Worlds 2 - Fleet Update out now
Mon, 13 November 2023
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/4f8493149b0e4df73425d335555a60daaa3c8148.jpg)
Welcome back explorers,
The day has come. The Fleet update, the latest major update for Distant Worlds 2, is out now and ready for you to discover.
Download the new Fleet update here (https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/DistantWorlds2-MultiUpdateComp-v1.1.8.1.zip).
The new Fleet major update includes many improvements across all areas of the game, but focuses most on the area of improving fleet and ship behavior in almost every way. With these new additions and improvements, players will be able to experience Distant Worlds 2 like never before.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/4582121bf2f990b84535b0b1e1b5b50146ecf441.jpg)
But that's not all. For those of you who want to know every detail of the Fleet update, a detailed changelog is available here (https://ftp-us.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/DW2FleetUpdateChangeList.pdf). This document outlines all the changes made in the update, from major new features to minor bug fixes.
In case you didn't have the chance to watch Erik's stream on Distant Worlds 2 and its future, you can take a look at it here:
https://youtu.be/bosFmNuQ6lc
During the stream, Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, previewed the Fleet update and the future of the game.
So don't waste any more time. Get ready to experience the latest version of Distant Worlds 2 and discover a new Galaxy.
The galaxy lives on
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Distant Worlds 2 - Feature Stellar Update
Mon, 11 March 2024
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/473b1d6e54ec18948c21a05829dd59650a22c0a7.jpg)
Ship Design and Research Priority Policies
Hello everyone and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2!
One of the principles of Distant Worlds 2 from the start has been to add more “guided automation” to find a better middle ground for players between full manual play and fully automated play. Ship Design and Research are two of the key areas where we heard a great deal of feedback from players who wanted more guided automation.
In Ship Design, players have the option to fully automate this area, design all of their ships manually, or mix things up by assigning some ship roles to manual design and keeping others automated. The fully automated and mix and match players wanted more influence over how those automated designs looked and we agreed that this would be a good thing.
In order to fully achieve this goal, we also needed a way to better guide research (when it is automated) because the ships and bases that you can design depend in large part on the research you have done in terms of what components are available to you. It made sense to connect the two systems in order to achieve the desired end result.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/20357a27b87cb9ca2652cbc6b803a51097c99a65.png)
We added an entirely new section to the Empire Polices to accomplish this goal and you can see a screenshot of that section above.
There are tooltips in the game to help explain the choices, but I will summarize how the system works here. For close-in weapons and stand-off weapons, you can choose a weapon category to prefer for research prioritization and ship design.
The automation will then focus your weapon research in those weapon categories and use those weapons in its automated designs. When a faction has a faction-unique component within these categories, it will be further preferred and weighted for research and design.
For example, you can see in the Mortalen ship below, that it has Blasters and Torpedoes as the preferences state, but in the choice of which Torpedo to use, the automation has researched and included the Mortalen-unique Pulse Torpedo.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/801a8e94dfe2d68ed06fc6b54058a046b2859a8e.png)
There are other categories where the player can also choose the priority of a particular weapon type, which ship role should be the smallest to try to fit those weapon types in its designs and even state that he does not want that type of weapon used at all to free up space for other priorities.
For example, see the screenshot below of the choices for Ion Weapons. These three options give you maximum flexibility – if you don’t want Ion weapons on your ships at all, or you do want them but only on your Battleships, or you want lots of Ion weapons on all of your ships, you can achieve that through these automation policies. The same flexibility now applies to Intercept Weapons (Point Defense and Fighter weapons), Area Weapons and Bombard weapons.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/41404583e06ebb2111a81b37df41b4cee47ca176.png)
Near the bottom of this new policy section are a few sections that are not about weapons. The first deals with Fighters and as with the above lets you pick how much you would like to prioritize Fighter Bays on your designs and which should be the smallest ship role with Starfighters.
The rest give you some choices on Reactors, Shields, Hyperdrives and Engines. In each of these component areas, the research tree offers you different paths. For example, you can see below the choices for Hyperdrives – you can choose to focus on Energy Efficiency, Jump Initiation Time or Speed. In the game, these are represented by the Kaldos, Calista-Dal and Equinox hyperdrive branches. Once you’ve picked one of these preferences, it will guide your automated research and design to focus on those components without manual involvement.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/7e979a0fbde27614ca3d5dfc903ffb5ec752c16f.png)
We plan to build on this system further in the future, adding additional preferences for Fighter designs and Civilian ship and base designs, as well as other requests the community may have.
We hope this feature review helps you understand how to use these new policies and that they make your time in Distant Worlds 2 more enjoyable!
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Distant Worlds 2: Game Faction Update - Announcement
Tue, 19 March 2024
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/a0d770f831969d389a253ef7f00590db6ae4afd9.jpg)
This update will include a refresh of the Human and Mortalen factions from April 9th on
Dear Explorers,
Another free update, "the Game Faction Update," is scheduled for release on April 9th for all Distant World 2 players.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/d2da591bc627c833dde5b1809e7fea33e3b1abaa.jpg)
It marks the beginning of updating the base game factions to match the gameplay standards of the new factions introduced in post-release DLCs.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/e0a2665a30a93b6f6e8ad881850cf2cb334341cd.jpg)
This update will include a refresh of the Human and Mortalen factions as well as many other changes, including improved border graphics and a new visualization for Fleet Engagement ranges. Future updates will cover the remaining base game factions until all are refreshed.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/fb8206018b19fa83f4eac6465ff5fd3f53766c4a.jpg)
It will include additional Fleet Engagement ranges and a new map overlay for engagement range visualization to help you plan your fleet home bases, engagement ranges and targets.
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/65bbaea82a4930802280ec00bd2b62526c5b5336.jpg)
This update, along with many other news and events, will be included in the free Game Faction Update, launching on April 9th.
That’s not all!
There will be a special streaming event with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, on March 26th at 13:00 PM GMT on our Twitch channel where he will pre-show the Game Faction update.
Be sure to tune in and join us for this special event.
The Galaxy lives on
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Distant Worlds 2: Game Faction Update - Dev Diary #1
Wed, April 3, 2024
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/d91d1cea18a622610025bc90d7854fb728dfacaa.jpg)
Faction Refresh Discussion - Human and Mortalen Faction Updates
Hello everyone and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2!
One of the points of feedback we heard from the base game release was that even though the factions had more to differentiate themselves from each other than in the original Distant Worlds, players wanted more differentiation in the gameplay between factions.
Since the release of the base game, we’ve created and released two DLCs, adding a total of four new factions to the game (the Ikkuro, Dhayut, Quameno and Gizurean), each with their own unique gameplay, story, ships, techs and capabilities. The development for these DLCs also added new features to the game to allow for more faction differentiation and to date, these faction DLCs have been well received.
We announced after the release of the Ikkuro and Dhayut DLC that we would also begin an effort to refresh the gameplay for all of the base game factions to make them more unique and bring them up to the level of the DLC factions. The upcoming “Game Faction Update” marks the beginning of updating the base game factions.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/3155c359033d968371f75099353dd1ea91530c17.jpg)
This update includes a refresh of the Human and Mortalen factions as well as all the base Government types. There are many other changes, including improved border graphics and a new visualization for Fleet Engagement ranges. Future updates will gradually cover the remaining base game factions until all are refreshed. Next up are the Zenox and Boskara and after that, the Teekan and Haakonish.
I will summarize the faction and government changes below, but for the full information, please read through the in-game faction and government descriptions carefully once the update is officially released. There are also new event illustrations and loading screens to go along with these changes.
The Humans
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/1c718f297bc7faa07fb992fde9639f793a57b179.jpg)
The Humans are understandably the most played faction and we also have looked at them as an entry point to the game for most, so we wanted them to be able to support a variety of playstyles.
They are now slightly better at living on Continental worlds and have a new conditional event which grants a new free Colonization tech advance when you colonize a new Continental world (you can receive this bonus once per planet).
For those focused on Trade or Tourism, we changed their Great Art Exposition from a faction event on a timer to a better conditional event which triggers whenever you sign a Free Trade Agreement or build a new Resort Base. It grants you a Trade and Tourism income throughout your empire along with a boost to Colony income and Tourism for the colony where the Great Art Exposition is held, but you can’t trigger it more than once every 5 years.
When war is declared on your Human empire, you now may choose either a new Admiral or new General with two positive traits when the “Hero of the Hour” event triggers, reflecting the Human ability to compete in the military sphere.
Internal divisions among Humans are reflected through “Internal Debates”, which reduces happiness throughout your empire, but also grants you a capable new Ambassador when you sign a new Defense treaty.
When a foreign intelligence mission against you succeeds (but is detected) you may now choose to spend a Spy to gain a +20% boost to Counter Espionage along with a small decrease to Colony Happiness throughout your empire for the next 2 years, helping Humans with a more Espionage-driven playstyle.
Humans now have Carriers which are larger than those of other factions, allowing them to either fit more starfighters or just be more well-rounded fighting ships.
We also added new Leader, Ambassador, Scientist, Spy character traits and expanded all the Human unique tech trees to make them more useful and accessible earlier in the research tree.
Humans also now have a new unique facility, the Foundation for Galactic Cooperation, which boosts Diplomacy, Espionage, PsyOps, Concealment and Trade.
Finally, we went through and reviewed and fixed any issues with the Human race-specific victory conditions.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/ff7e8519b7624c602bb953266d09e3aa04a0d05b.jpg)
The Mortalen
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/fb8206018b19fa83f4eac6465ff5fd3f53766c4a.jpg)
The Mortalen are disciplined, reliable, loyal but very militaristic. They can be your best friend if you invest in getting along with them or your worst enemy if you cross them. We wanted to use the new faction tech we had available to build on their militaristic way of dealing with the galaxy and give our more warlike players a fun experience.
Mortalen troops now gain experience and revcover faster than before and the Mortalen are also better at Armor Research, about which more below.
The previous timed faction events “Warrior Wave” and “Patriotic Wave” are now conditional events. Warrior Wave now triggers when you declare war and lets you choose between a boost to Population Growth and Troop Recruitment or a boost to Troop Attack Strength for 2 years. Patriotic Wave now triggers when war is declared on you and gives you a choice of Population Growth and either Corruption Reduction or War Weariness Reduction.
Any of these choices will help you in wartime, but it will be your choice how best to respond.
When you invade and conquer an enemy world you will now trigger “Know Your Enemy” as the Mortalen tacticians study their foes, allowing you to choose a 2 year boost to either Espionage and Counter Espionage or Targeting and Countermeasures.
Periodically you will also be asked to choose between two characters, always picked from your Leader, Admirals and Generals. Whoever you choose will undergo a trial of arms, with a good chance to succeed and gain a positive trait and a smaller chance to fail and gain a negative trait. This will also help develop the most experienced Admirals and Generals, which are relevant for your victory conditions, if these trials go well for you.
All Mortalen ship and spaceport hulls now have +1 Reactive Armor rating, making their ships harder to destroy, especially in the early game. The Mortalen also receive a new unique Armor tech called Block Armor, which has its own sub-tree and has a higher Reactive rating than standard armor.
There are also new unique Leader, Admiral, General, Ambassador character traits and the other Mortalen unique techs were expanded as with the Human ones.
Finally, we went through and reviewed and fixed any issues with the Mortalen race-specific victory conditions.
The Governments
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/401bd3a2dbde4b7f96bc760fbf5d237781de4aa0.jpg)
We revisited every base game Government type and added some unique gameplay to each of them. One of the most changed, which I’ll review here, is Feudalism. Feudalism is a relatively unstable type of government in that leadership changes at the top tend to be very disruptive, but it now gains several very interesting features to compensate for those periodic disruptions and rebellions.
In a Feudal Empire, your Private Economy can now build individual Feudal Escorts for its own Escort, Guard and Patrol missions. You will see these marked with a Star in your ship list and it will state that they are not state-controlled. You will not be able to give them orders, but they will help keep your space safer from lower level threats such as pirates and creatures, without costing you any State income or maintenance.
Feudalism also gets upgraded Planetary Militia which fights like Infantry without upgrades. This is a big strength increase which makes Feudal worlds significantly harder to conquer.
Finally, Feudal Obligations will double your Troop Recruitment Rate 2 years after War declaration and your Troops gain experience 25% faster.
I hope this article gives you a good preview of what’s coming in the Game Faction update and that these free improvements will increase your enjoyment of Distant Worlds 2. Thanks again for your support!
Distant Worlds 2: Game Faction Update is coming on April 9th
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Distant Worlds 2: Game Faction Update is out now
Tue, 9 April 2024
(https://clan.akamai.steamstatic.com/images/39688059/5a09c632388a80a6767e48b4ae951b9fd36bc13c.jpg)
It marks the beginning of updating the base game factions
This update includes a refresh of the Human and Mortalen factions as well as many other changes, including improved border graphics and a new visualization for Fleet Engagement ranges. Future updates will cover the remaining base game factions until all are refreshed.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/d2da591bc627c833dde5b1809e7fea33e3b1abaa.jpg)
BASE FACTION AND GOVERNMENT REFRESH
This update includes a refresh of the Human and Mortalen base game factions as well as all the base game government types. A summary of changes is below, but for the full information, please read through the in-game faction and government descriptions carefully. There are also new event illustrations and loading screens to go along with these changes.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/efb9213486aeea67654f51be62e2b629bbe86c44.jpg)
FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIORS
We added additional Fleet Engagement ranges and a new map overlay for engagement range visualization to help you plan your fleet home bases, engagement ranges and targets.
GAME SPEED
We recommend only using x8 speed sparingly, as it can be too easy to miss important notifications otherwise.
- added new x8 and x1/8 game speed controls.
(https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//39688059/401bd3a2dbde4b7f96bc760fbf5d237781de4aa0.jpg)
For those eager to delve into the nitty-gritty details of the changes, a detailed changelog is available here https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Game%20Faction%20Update%20Change%20List%20v1220%20%281%29.docx (https://www.matrixgames.com/amazon/Game%20Faction%20Update%20Change%20List%20v1220%20%281%29.docx), detailing everything from major enhancements to minor bug fixes.
You can download the standalone files here: https://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorlds2/DistantWorlds2-MultiUpdateComp-v1.2.2.0.zip
Don't miss DasTactic's stream playing the Game Faction Update on our Twitch channel at 8:00 PM UK time