Hi everyone,
We’ve been working on a new Distant Worlds game for more than four years now and we thought it was time to start giving you a peek at the journey we've been on.
Please note that the screenshot included here is not from a final, polished release build so will in places include some unfinished areas and placeholder art. There is much that is still subject to change between our current development build and the release.
This first peek is just a teaser to whet your appetite and to draw your attention to the fact that we are going to start talking more about where we're going over the coming weeks and months.
What you see below shows a view taken from just behind the night side of a Mortalen Rocky Desert Planet, Shaom Hee 6. On the dark side, you can see some lights from the Mortalen colony below. On the light side, you can see a small storm in the atmosphere above the world, as well as a Medium Space Port and a variety of ships coming and going, carrying cargo or colonists, or guarding the area against pirates or other intruders. The snippet of interface in the bottom shows the planetary bodies, ships and stations at this location and is an easy way to navigate what's within your view. Note that this is a cropped screenshot and there is much more that is not shown.
With that said, we think the image itself conveys a good bit of new information and we’ll leave it there for now so that you can discuss.
Most importantly, we do plan to show more and speak about where Distant Worlds is going in more detail in our Home of Wargamers Twitch live stream event on December 19th, around Noon US Eastern time / 5PM UK time, so please tune in then for some more information. I will also be participating in the Twitch chat during the live stream to answer questions.
We appreciate your interest in Distant Worlds and we hope you enjoyed this first brief teaser.
Martok, hopefully we'll be playing DW2 this time next year.!!!!!!!
got some screenies coming y'all's way shortly :)
Martok,
You'll need a cold shower and clean undies after reading this.
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4737033
Guess I'm the only one not that thrilled with the first one. Didn't like the ship battles, the economy, space travel... or much of anything in the game really... :oh:.
I'll mention one other thing as a bonus for you all. Most ship components now also have a fighter/bomber-sized version and in DW2, you not only can design your own ships and stations, but also your own fighters and bombers based on the technologies you have researched.
Hi folks,
At the start of the year, a 2020 release seemed extremely certain. While we did make very good progress this year, we are still in alpha and will not release in 2020. In December, I'll be able to reveal much more of the game and talk about our release plans in more detail.
Regards,
- Erik
It's ok for me as they seem to have made a lot of progress. I am in no hurry.
I have been consoling myself with far too many hours in Dual Universe. Which, I might add, become my go-to game for the foreseeable future.
Justin
Are you guys considering applying for the beta at all? I've thought about it, of course, butSame here. Don't think i am a good beta tester either.my piece of crap computer probably wouldn't run itI'm generally not good at trying to actually "break" the game; i just want to play it. ::)
I was so very lost with DW. I think that was a mix of me wanting to control everything and so many things being assigned to the AI. There were so many options iirc you could lose yourself for weeks just trying to find a happy medium.
It was a cracking game and the developer certainly believed in options rather then forcing players to play their way. That should always be applauded - but in the end trying to find a happy place to play broke me.
Would you say the space community was divided between this and stellaris?
I never played DW but this looks pretty cool
I was so very lost with DW. I think that was a mix of me wanting to control everything and so many things being assigned to the AI. There were so many options iirc you could lose yourself for weeks just trying to find a happy medium.
It was a cracking game and the developer certainly believed in options rather then forcing players to play their way. That should always be applauded - but in the end trying to find a happy place to play broke me.
Same for me.
Me three.
Excellent! Can't wait.
I just wish they would release a patch for the first game to make sure it runs on Windows 10. I still have to play it on my older Windows 7 desktop as i haven't been able to run it on neither of the Windows 10 laptops we have at home.
I'm cautiously optimistic about what I'm seeing for DW2. I find I'm getting back into 4X games and I'm hoping this one can keep my attention for a long while.
I just played through Endless Space 2 for the first time and the thing I enjoyed the most (other than the really great UI) was the sense of story. I don't find Stellaris (or any other Paradox game) really tells a good tale. DW:U always did, with the Galactic History, named battles, etc. Hopefully DW2 will do the same.
I know it runs on some computers but there are quiet a few who cannot run it under windows 10. One of the problems seems to be the intro video. I did remove it on my main windows 10 laptop but the game still doesn't run. Havent' tried to disable the video on my second windows 10 laptop yet though...Excellent! Can't wait.
I just wish they would release a patch for the first game to make sure it runs on Windows 10. I still have to play it on my older Windows 7 desktop as i haven't been able to run it on neither of the Windows 10 laptops we have at home.
I'm literally running it on Win10 right now.
I know it runs on some computers but there are quiet a few who cannot run it under windows 10. One of the problems seems to be the intro video. I did remove it on my main windows 10 laptop but the game still doesn't run. Havent' tried to disable the video on my second windows 10 laptop yet though...Excellent! Can't wait.
I just wish they would release a patch for the first game to make sure it runs on Windows 10. I still have to play it on my older Windows 7 desktop as i haven't been able to run it on neither of the Windows 10 laptops we have at home.
I'm literally running it on Win10 right now.
I have all versions available (cds, steam and GOG).I know it runs on some computers but there are quiet a few who cannot run it under windows 10. One of the problems seems to be the intro video. I did remove it on my main windows 10 laptop but the game still doesn't run. Havent' tried to disable the video on my second windows 10 laptop yet though...Excellent! Can't wait.
I just wish they would release a patch for the first game to make sure it runs on Windows 10. I still have to play it on my older Windows 7 desktop as i haven't been able to run it on neither of the Windows 10 laptops we have at home.
I'm literally running it on Win10 right now.
Are you using the Steam version?
I seem to have a charmed life when it comes to older games (including Distant Worlds), as I generally can run them just fine on my machine (POS that it otherwise is).Managed to make it run on my second Windows 10 laptop by disabling the intro video….but the screen is smaller on that laptop….not ideal for Distant Worlds tiny UI.
Like Crusader Kings, I'll certainly buy it. But play it? :P
I seem to have a charmed life when it comes to older games (including Distant Worlds), as I generally can run them just fine on my machine (POS that it otherwise is).Managed to make it run on my second Windows 10 laptop by disabling the intro video….but the screen is smaller on that laptop….not ideal for Distant Worlds tiny UI.
Like Crusader Kings, I'll certainly buy it. But play it? :P
I managed to stop myself buying the new CK for exactly this reason. Now I can use that money to buy something useful, like minis I won't get around to painting.
My main laptop has an 17' screen so this would be ok. 15' is really too small. But i do play it mainly on my old Windows 7 desktop with a 24' screen...the question is for how long.I seem to have a charmed life when it comes to older games (including Distant Worlds), as I generally can run them just fine on my machine (POS that it otherwise is).Managed to make it run on my second Windows 10 laptop by disabling the intro video….but the screen is smaller on that laptop….not ideal for Distant Worlds tiny UI.
Gah. Yeah, that's genuinely unfortunate.
I'll admit, I have a hard time imagining running DWU on even a larger laptop (or at least one with a larger screen). For me, the game's UI and font make running it on a desktop almost mandatory -- yet another reason to look forward to the sequel.
I wasn't familiar with this youtuber. Great to see this.
Looking good. I like the new combat and tech research.
Yessss many hours will fade in future! :bigthumb:
And when they implement multiplayer......
I get my anniversary coupon in Dec. If DW2 is released after Halloween I'll wait until then to pick it up. A July release and I'll get it on release day.
I get my anniversary coupon in Dec. If DW2 is released after Halloween I'll wait until then to pick it up. A July release and I'll get it on release day.
Either way, I'm guessing it will be at least a month before we hear/see anything more, if only so that Matrix can avoid their promotional materials being buried under the news cycle of Nemesis' release.
A man can still dream, though. ;)
I do wish Matrix/Slitherine would take a page from Paradox and do more regular updates. Dev diaries etc. Doesn't have to be every week, but some kind of regular schedule.
This is at the top of my to purchase list, but it's hard to get excited when the developer/publisher don't seem to be doing anythig to promote it.
It's about bloody time...!
I’m still excited for this one to come out.
I'm glad someone noticed the new camera angles. You can rotate freely on the horizontal plane. The angle you look down at depends on choosing one of the preset angles, ranging from top down, high angle, medium angle (the default), low angle, bridge view (you are "in" the selected ship), trailing view (you are just "behind" the selected ship).
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go bash my head against a wall.
Holy hand grenades, Slitherine drives me f***ing insane with how they promote -- and release information for -- their games: After over a week of waiting -- and no communication whatsoever until a few of us started nagging -- it was finally mentioned that the next dev diary won't even be released until a full month after the first one:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=5055701
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go bash my head against a wall.
c'mon now, the wall doesn't deserve that! :peace:
And as you pointed out, they're killing their own hype.
Have they said anything about ships in combat? Is still just a big mosh pit or will stand off ships actually stand off? Can you have pickets guarding carriers/battleships?
Yeah, I’m still seeing cruisers moving into point blank range with everything else…. :idiot2:
The fighters and bombers seem to be acting well and point defence weapons look good.
But larger ships should “sit” back, and watch as the frigates and destroyers battle it out, while firing at long range …
I have the opposite problem: My Matrix anniversary is in August, which means my coupon will likely expire *just* before I can use it for Distant Worlds 2. :(
All of this anniversary coupon talk made me go and dig through my spam box. Sure enough, there was a Matrix anniversary coupon in there just about to expire! So I snagged a copy of Gary Grigsby's War in the East 2.
Thanks guys! :bigthumb:
I think we may be lucky to see DW2 in Dec.
3.) Your jump range is now generally shorter than your fuel range.
And still no release date. :waiting:
And still no release date. :waiting:
Cheers, Anguille! I've actually applied as well this time around. I figure the game is far enough along at this point that any feedback from me can't screw it up. ::)Was thinking the same... :whistle:
Just applied for the new wave of beta testers....
I will admit though, I really like the random options for research options in Stellaris. So I will be using random research setting in DW2.
WOW!! DW:U is on sale during the Matrix Holiday sale for $6. That's 90% off.
Some official news coming tomorrow.
Incidentally, the actual announcement starts at around the 32:35 mark for anyone who's curious:
Thanks to my Humble Bundle discount I can currently get it for £23. Very tempting...
Nope, apparently it was a mistake and they'd put it up too early. It isn't there now but it certainly was before, and I bought it. :)
No crashes for me so far; maybe I'm lucky? I've come across a couple minor bugs, but my biggest complaints to this point are various UI/QoL issues.How long have you been able to play it?
First aid course :tickedoff:
A couple of quick thoughts;
1. In DW:U there was a screen you could use to queue up the building of multiple ships. I'm not finding that here in DW2. You have to select a construction yard and click the ship want to build, that many times.
2. Why is there still no fleet build/design screen.
3. I haven't found a way to transfer a ship from one fleet to another.
A couple of quick thoughts;
1. In DW:U there was a screen you could use to queue up the building of multiple ships. I'm not finding that here in DW2. You have to select a construction yard and click the ship want to build, that many times.
2. Why is there still no fleet build/design screen.
3. I haven't found a way to transfer a ship from one fleet to another.
2. There is a fleet design screen. Take the "Military" tour and it will show you how to get there. It lets you define what types of ships and number you want in the fleet and how the fleet acts. If all that is what you meant...
What I am really hoping long-term is the game is accessible for modders to do their work.
I booted it up, made sure it works, spent 10 mins with it and switched it off - it needs way more than oooo I’ll have a look at this for a bit - need a proper sit down on a day off
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
(to share one of ojsdad's frustrations) that there doesn't appear to be a single screen from which I can order X number of Z ship type to be built, and instead I have to go a specific facility and manually queue some up.
(to share one of ojsdad's frustrations) that there doesn't appear to be a single screen from which I can order X number of Z ship type to be built, and instead I have to go a specific facility and manually queue some up.
Found it! Top right of the screenshot with the green box around it
I'm not 100% sure it's the same thing as you're describing, but the previous game had a noise that played as you zoomed into a planet....kind of like a humming noise iirc.
If it's a feature, then you should maybe write a request that this could be turned off?
Martok - much respect to you for being honest.
Yeah, from what I've been reading here and elsewhere this game sounds like it could've used at least another few months in the oven. I guess that's Matrix/Slitherine for you. And shame on me for pre-ordering; I rarely break that rule but thought DW2 would be a safe bet.
Oh well, I'm back from holiday so I'll give it a try tonight anyway.
Should be able to dedicate some time to it today
Can you disable the story elements then?
(to share one of ojsdad's frustrations) that there doesn't appear to be a single screen from which I can order X number of Z ship type to be built, and instead I have to go a specific facility and manually queue some up.
Found it! Top right of the screenshot with the green box around it
This doesn't seem to be working at all. I've tried it a couple of times, but no ships seem to be getting queued up.
Someone in the Steam discussion was saying that some of the pirates are triggered by events, and are part of the lore story, and are thus not controlled by the startup settings…
make sense if true but still seems a bit much right at the start.
(to share one of ojsdad's frustrations) that there doesn't appear to be a single screen from which I can order X number of Z ship type to be built, and instead I have to go a specific facility and manually queue some up.
Found it! Top right of the screenshot with the green box around it
This doesn't seem to be working at all. I've tried it a couple of times, but no ships seem to be getting queued up.
I thought I had the same problem at first - are you clicking "purchase" after queuing up the ships? Nothing gets built until you do, but I've just confirmed it's working for me.
[You are correct, though, that there's no way to re-base a fleet. What you can do is select the fleet (therefore all the ships will be selected in a group), disband it, then click create fleet again. However I don't know what logic it uses to choose what will be the new base. When I did it, the base went from the planet to the star port in orbit.
After researching colonisation tech I scratched my head for ages wondering how to build a colony ship. Turns out you need to research another tech (something like small civilian vessels) to get access to the colony ship hull. You'd think one would be a prerequisite for the other, wouldn't you? ::) Anyway, hopefully this saves someone else the bafflement.
I think I've found a bug regarding resource abundancies. I literally watched with my own eyes as an exploration ship surveyed an asteroid. It definitely said it had about 3% Mebnar and nothing else. However I then got a pop-up suggestion that we build a mining base there because it has 13% steel and 12% Mebnar! I said yes anyway, then popped back over to the asteroid, selected it, and once again it said 3% Mebnar. So which is it?!
heh - im much easier to please than you guys im just watching private industry do its thing - loving it
Dont know if it will be easier to open a new DW2 faq thread but ill ask here anyway
ive scanned an asteroid and it shows steel and blah blah but with a red box round it saying shortage - is this saying i have a shortage of materials to build a mine here or that i have a shortage of this at home and building a mine here will be great
i keep getting a message saying theres hidden things on my home planet - presumably i need to research more high powered scanners and fit the new gear onto the exploration ship?
i just failed my first research target having 'taken the wrong path' is that just a bad dice roll?
i keep getting a message saying theres hidden things on my home planet - presumably i need to research more high powered scanners and fit the new gear onto the exploration ship?
i just failed my first research target having 'taken the wrong path' is that just a bad dice roll?
I think this has been mentioned but I can't find it now - why can't I build a starport wherever I like? One got built automatically (might have been a suggestion first) around my home planet, but regardless of whether it's a good idea, why can't I order a construction ship to build one around another? Does the planet need to be colonised first?
....
I think I've found a bug regarding resource abundancies. I literally watched with my own eyes as an exploration ship surveyed an asteroid. It definitely said it had about 3% Mebnar and nothing else. However I then got a pop-up suggestion that we build a mining base there because it has 13% steel and 12% Mebnar! I said yes anyway, then popped back over to the asteroid, selected it, and once again it said 3% Mebnar. So which is it?!
Distant Worlds 2 - Latest Update (1.0.2.1)
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
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 + 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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
There, I hid it now.Ha - doesn't matter - Barth quoted it :doh:
Wasn't looking to do that, was just trying to show that some of the pirates are more than what they first appear.
So, I did a search on the DW2 forum asking about setting the Home Base for a fleet, here is the answer.
There, I hid it now.Ha - doesn't matter - Barth quoted it :doh:
Wasn't looking to do that, was just trying to show that some of the pirates are more than what they first appear.
Playing as Humans, pre-warp tech. Shortly after I get basic warp tech, I get visited by a pirate clan. I have the choice of ignoring them or paying them 25,000 credits.
I think I've found a bug regarding resource abundancies. I literally watched with my own eyes as an exploration ship surveyed an asteroid. It definitely said it had about 3% Mebnar and nothing else. However I then got a pop-up suggestion that we build a mining base there because it has 13% steel and 12% Mebnar! I said yes anyway, then popped back over to the asteroid, selected it, and once again it said 3% Mebnar. So which is it?!
Solved. Apparently the advisor popup details all the resources that will be in range of the mine. The reason I was confused is that it named the precise asteroid, so I assumed it was talking about resources only from that asteroid.
I no more posted the above about colonies, and then a number of them start improving economically.
1. If you have policies set to suggest ships to build, the AI will want to build a lot of military ships to patrol you colonized systems. I'm not sure having that many ships is necessary.
2. I've salvaged a couple of ships and had them join a fleet. In stead of heading to the nearest system to get fuel, and then proceeding to the fleet, it heads straight to the fleet with no fuel, thus taking a very long time. It reminds me of DW:U where the ships navigators couldn't plot a course with stops at a gas station.
I've started 3 games and had Independent Colonies option set to the lowest setting, Very Rare. However, in the first 30 years of game play, in each of the 3 games that I had started, I'd come across 3 separate ICs. Each game was created with 2000 star systems in a varied cluster galaxy. In the latest attempt, I've fully explored 29 systems, partially explored 43, and have 1935 unknown.
What is the purpose of setting the likely hood of encountering ICs if they're all going to get placed close to your home world?
Currently, DW2 has a "Mixed" rating on Steam, with an average score of 66%. I can't say it's unwarranted, but it's definitely going to hurt sales.
And in a few cases, they seem to have taken a step back. Maybe I (we) had too many high hopes for DW2
I was a tester and I don't recall seeing any reports of people not being able to start the game or get those black screens and crashes all the time.
Something in their code changed from beta to release as I was suddenly unable to start the game on my laptop anymore where that machine ran the beta without a hitch. You can't provide feedback on stuff that doesn't happen.
For example. many people insist they want to give orders via the right-mouse click menu, where DW2's menu system provides this functionality now. Learn to use the lists in the proper window panes and the UI will start making sense before long.
I think most people forget that DWU was the culmination of many years of DLC and improvement over the initial release.
I do consider DW a true space naval game more so than Stellaris. I was always a wormhole person, and still not opposed to them, but after reading the Honorverse books, I'm a lot more open to hyper/warp open space. DW allows and requires you to build refueling points, long range scanner, boarder strong points, and rapid reaction forces.
Hi everyone,
This is the first of our beta updates which we hope will become an official update early next week. This is focused on critical crash issues and we think we've made significant progress on them.
If you are having any issues, please try this new beta and let us know if it helps you.
To facilitate frequent beta iterations as needed, this beta is only available for now on Steam and GOG. All Matrix customers also have a free Steam key available (through your My Page) which can be activated if desired to install DW2 via Steam and test this Beta there.
On Steam, you can switch to it by going to Distant Worlds 2 in your Steam Library, right-clicking on it, choosing Properties -> Betas -> then choosing "beta - v.1.0.2.9" from the drop-down list and allowing Steam to update your game. If it updates correctly, you should see 1.0.2.9 listed as your version in-game on the bottom right.
On GOG, you can switch to it by going to Distant Worlds 2 in your GOG Library, selecting Distant Worlds 2, then clicking on the button next to "Play" that looks like two horizontal lines with small offset circles, choosing Manage Installation -> Configure then picking "Open Beta" from the Beta channels drop-down list and allowing GOG to update.
Changes in 1.0.2.9:
CRASH FIXES
- 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
ADDITIONAL LOGGING
- added functionality to automatically send crash logs to dev team (prompts player to send in next game session)
OTHER CHANGES
- 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
Regards,
- Erik
Changes in 1.0.3.0
CRASH FIXES
- 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
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- improved rendering performance when in research screen
OTHER CHANGES
- additional data fixes for certain small troop transport ship hulls and certain artifacts
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
When I sit down and actually play DW2, I have fun with it...for a little while. Sooner or later, however, I find myself encountering issues
I do believe Distant Worlds 2 will get where it needs to be, eventually.
It's just a shame that it feels like waiting for the game to come out again, since we've already been through that once.
This was a Day 1 purchase for me. I do that rarely. So to have DW2 in this state is disappointing.
But then I read the latest in this thread and decided to wait a few months.
Good decision?
As a DW2 newcomer - what’s the issue with Indy colonies
Some of us are huge fans of the first game and really didn't want to criticise DW2, but the issues are impossible to ignore and I couldn't in good conscience recommend it to anybody yet. However, knowing the developer as we do, I think we're all pretty sure it will be the game it can be in time.
Is there a way to see the range of an asteroid mining station so I can choose the optimal location for capturing as many as possible in the circle?
And secondly having discovered early warp all my exploration ships fkd off to far and foreign lands leaving my home system unscanned - manually control one or build an old boy with out skip drives?
And then the pirates came - 3 factions - 1 asshole and 2 who will protect me and I have actually seen them shooting at the assholes so yay AI
Questions then DW2 mentors
I have a construction ship that somehow managed to jump back to the homeworld but is 55% damaged and disabled - what do I send to him to go fix him?
And… I’ve found an essential resource in my system but not the home system - ive easily jumped there to scan it and build a mining station and the station is filling up with goodies - will the civilian ships eventually figure out how to get this far out to collect the stuff and take it home or does the fact that it’s in the station count as me having it?
I don’t know the guide he refers to but I’ve heard a lot of people using ‘Scott’s guide’
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4969382#p4969382
Had my first ship out of fuel after getting damaged fighting a space beastie - do you simply build a fuel tanker and send it there? Does it auto fill with fuel - if i left it on auto would it take fuel to the stricken ship - which somehow after 30 mins sorted itself out and flew off anyway!
And after about 8 hours gaming now, and exploring maybe 15 systems i still havent found a suitable colony if im sticking to the 20% rule - this sound normal?
Fleet and Tanker behaviour is on the priority list however, so we should see improvements coming fairly soon.
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
I wish I could see what starting parameters I set
If I go back to start new game I thought it might have my last choices saved but I don’t think it does I’m wondering if I clicked rare for similar planets
Changes in 1.0.3.9:
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- improved performance when calculating construction yard wait times, especially for large games
FLEETS
- fixed Prepare and Attack fleet missions to properly evaluate need to refuel
- fleets now wait for all fighters to board carriers before hyperjumping
- fighters boarding carriers now move at maximum speed when returning to carrier from far away
- 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
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
- tourism missions now properly ignore colony population policy settings (tourism to destinations with policy of Do Not Accept, etc)
- further improved race selection for new colonies, even for independent colonies, i.e. attempt to use most suitable race
OTHER CHANGES
- 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
- 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
- suppress incorrect initial mouse-up when enter research screen from main view header (would sometimes incorrectly queue the hovered research project)
- fixed faulty weapon damage graph for tractor beams in Ship Design screen
- fixed fighters sometimes incorrectly boarding carriers and then immediately relaunching
- 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
- fixed bug where destinations were sometimes failing to receive resources via freighter
ART BUNDLE CHANGES
- fixed various issues in the art bundles with incorrect texture sizes as well as uncompressed or unstreamed texture settings
.....and with 'its a learning game' the litte red, behorned, trident carrying martok on my shoulder assuaged my guilt and convinced me to add a compatible moon to colonise between me and the games real offering - and were off to 'learn' about colonising shit
Dear Lord someone help me…….
I’ve designed ‘support frigate’ all sexy torpedos and missiles, set to cautious to sit at the back and launch the doom
Then I ‘copy as new’ and create the ‘close in frigate’ all ion cannons and in your face, set to aggressive but this overwrites the support frigate so do it again and it overwrites the other way…… sob
How do I make 2 different frigates
First of all, ship tactics set in the design editor are not linked to ships using that design. THis means any changes to tactics have to be done by selecting each ship individually.
The alternative is to override at the fleet level which precludes say a carrier set to evade while an attack ship is set to aggressive
Second is the design of fleets. One design per role isn't enough.
Each design needs to be it's own "line" vs one "line" per role.
Finally the interplay of fleet automation, ship tactics, and fleet tactics are unclear. This leads to single ships retreating when you don't want them to or engaging when you don't want them to, or not engaging at all.
So lets say, early game I want my escorts to run away after popping off missiles before they get hit. I set that in the design
Great.
Now as the game progresses I want my escorts in fleets.
Well, what ends up happening is that the fleet jumps in, and those escorts book it away at the first sign of trouble.
Now to fix this I have to select each escort one by one and change their settings or override at the fleet level.
Another example is setting roles. Either the fleet overrides these as needed or I have to manually change every ship that was built prior to changing the design from Attack to Close Escort
So if I had to wager, the issue isn't with you on setting up fleets, it's with how the systems in DW2 are set up and interact with each other creating significant friction against making ANY changes that don't involve fleet settings or overrides.
The result is a blob vs a fleet with roles
I’ve watched a video that addresses a few issues or at least explains why some things happen and others don’t particularly the ship behaviour at individual level and fleet level with regards to engagement rules when on auto - I can maybe see a patch in the future that dumbs down the amount of choices you can make here as it’s clear too many is complicating the ai
There are some significant gameplay issues we did not spot before release, but gameplay issues are relatively easy to fix. I'm confident we'll be able to resolve those pretty quickly whenever we have time to focus on the gameplay side. I don't see more than 4-6 weeks of gameplay work based on the reports so far, it's just been a lower priority to date because of the critical issues on some systems with crashes and performance. Those are my bigger concerns - the technical issues that are still causing issues on those systems (of course not on any of our systems). We've already tried just about everything short of a major engine upgrade to fix those. Thus, the next step there is a major engine upgrade, probably in about a couple of weeks but it's really quite concerning that these exist at all and that most can't be reproduced on our systems. In any case, I have read the feedback here and I'm sorry many feel let down, but I completely understand. It's disappointing to us as well as we thought we were releasing a generally solid game that would only get better post-release and in fact we delayed release twice internally just to make sure it would be solid. It's clear in hindsight that we had some blind spots and also hadn't appropriately prioritized or fully understood some of the feedback we had received during testing. Along with fixing game issues, we're also trying to address those blind spots for the future. DW2 will get to a much better state, probably within a month or two, but especially for those customers experiencing the critical crash/performance issues, we're very sorry this turned into a source of frustration for them rather than entertainment.
I don't think it's realistic for any game that has decent sales these days to reach absolute zero given the wide variety of possible system configurations, many of which have issues that are not something we can fix. It's clear though that right now DW2 still has issues on some systems that are fine with the vast majority of other 3D games. We're aiming to make sure those are resolved, which will likely leave a very small percentage of systems that are either below minimum spec or have some kind of truly weird setup or conflicting software issues, but that's the case with almost any game. That's the point though where it will transition from a very high immediate priority to a more long-term ongoing task.
Some, but as much qualitative as quantitative. Forum and e-mail and Discord feedback of course gives us a sense of how much each update has improved the situation and what major problems remain unresolved. The automated crash reporting does give us some insight into the pace/frequency/volume and type of crashes that are at least generating logs (these have decreased very significantly with 1.0.3.7 and later). The reporting form does the same, just selecting for those willing to send us a report. The critical issues survey gives us some insight into the perceptions of customers with issues on what they see as the major remaining issue areas.
- Ergo, I can safely ignore DW2 until at lest August, if not later. At this point, I think that's just as well.
I’m designing the military ones - there’s a few tweaks I could make to the civ ones but I haven’t bothered
I haven’t gone anywhere near the civ ones - I want to because the AI arms them and I want them just to run if there’s trouble
But so far if I research advanced tech the AI recalls them all and upgrades them without my input
Just a quick note to say that Elliot has been sick for a week and that has slowed down our update schedule and plans. Hopefully he will be feeling better soon and we'll be able to resume the planned update schedule next week.
What your Colony Prevalence set to.
Just checked - Scott’s set up is very rare
I just noticed Erik posted this in the Discord yesterday afternoon:QuoteJust a quick note to say that Elliot has been sick for a week and that has slowed down our update schedule and plans. Hopefully he will be feeling better soon and we'll be able to resume the planned update schedule next week.
Hi everyone,
Elliot has recovered and we're working on a new beta update for the end of this week. Our focus remains on reported issues with fleet and ship behavior in certain situations and with certain combinations of settings, including tanker behavior and tactical setting interactions.
Regards,
- Erik
Another bump on the road -
Now I’m multi cultured I have a range of colonisation options - so I find a volcanic planet that the boskarans would love to live on, I have a planet with 128m boskarans in and 58m humans - the humans would hate to live on the new planet - I build a colony ship and there appears to be no way to just load the boskarans
- 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
Changes in 1.0.4.7:
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- improved general performance, especially in very large late-game galaxies
FLEETS AND SHIPS
- 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
- further tweaked carrier speed lower while waiting for fighters to board when preparing for hyperjump
- ensure Tactical Settings dialog closes when select ship or fleet of another empire
FUEL TANKERS
- additional tweaks to Fuel Tanker evaluation of when to refuel various ship roles, e.g. exploration ships now not refuelled until lower fuel level, thus spending less time waiting for fuel tankers
- ensure properly exclude fuel tankers when generating action button for fleet retrofit (fleet fuel tankers operate independently and retrofit on their own schedule)
RESOURCES
- 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
CHARACTER SKILLS
- 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
ECONOMY AND CONSTRUCTION
- ensure automated construction does not build too many ships at once (minimize big swings in cash on hand, etc)
- ensure tourism destinations are selected more evenly by passenger ships (resort bases + scenic colonies)
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)
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
COLONIZATION
- 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)
OTHER CHANGES
- 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
Well it looks like Huw can finally dust off the game again.
It's typical, Martok, because you're slowly convincing me to give Interstellar Space another go. :D
So, does that mean that they are lost? No just calling out the RAC to bring a can of fuel?
I really want "don't ask again" on the popups. I keep getting a popup to build a research station somewhere or other because of a 10% bonus to hyperdrive research. I don't want to disable suggestions in general, but I do want to disable this one because I definitely don't want to build this station yet.
Never had one of those
Can you change build research to manual?
.........and beyond?
ive got exploration ships stopping at bases to refuel before jumping :party:
On a side note - I don’t think I have thick enough skin or tolerance to be a game dev
Wondered into the steam reviews - mainly:-
You’re game is shit - it won’t let me do XXX
Edit - oh wait I’ve found the button, yayyy you’re game is great
OR
Developer has abandoned game no updates in weeks what a con
There’s is an update literally 20 minutes ago you dick
Oh yeah, never mind, downloading now
The total black to white to black again of these assholes on steam make me want to punch them in the face
Encountering a bit of weirdness - not going to say bug as it’s something I may not understand fully
There are systems well within my ships range that construction ships won’t go to to build, with the ui saying they’re out of range but if I click on the ship and right click on the planet ‘build mining station’ is an option 🤷♂️🤷♂️
No it goes and builds - I have fancy furs and cocktail drinks as proof
No handbags and shoes though
Changes in 1.0.5,3 Beta - July 7th, 2022
CRASH FIXES
- 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
PERFORMANCE AND MEMORY
- 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
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
FLEETS AND SHIPS
- 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
COLONIZATION
- 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)
MODDING SUPPORT
- 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
OTHER
- 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
Changes in 1.0.5.6 Beta (July 14th, 2022):
CRASH FIXES
- 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
SHIP BEHAVIOR
- 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
COLONIZATION AND SUITABILITY
- tweaked independent colony suitability for some races so that always have suitability of at least +20 (economically viable)
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- 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
BUG FIXES
- fixed Mining Locations list sometimes showing wrong items when filtering by a specific resource
- properly filter out unknown resources in Colonies list
- 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
SOUND EFFECTS
- limit number of simultaneous sound effects of same type to avoid very high effect volume, especially when first zooming into a location
OTHER
- provided better download link when prompting to install .Net 6.0
- 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
- remove HighDPI aware registry flag for current user (no need for this as DW2 now handles this itself)
- fixed a typo regarding the Technocracy government
- Military Academy facilities are now 1 per Empire as originally intended
Changes in 1.0.6.0 Beta (July 28th, 2022):
CRASH FIXES
- 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
FLEET, SHIP AND FIGHTER BEHAVIOR
- 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)
COLONIZATION
- improved loading colonists for new colony targets so that load most suitable race even when is not dominant race at load colony
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)
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- avoid precaching some models and textures when have low video memory
- added some extra game settings to allow disabling some rendering effects
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
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- 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
OTHER
- improved error reporting in some situations
- further reduced simultaneous sound effects that can sometimes create loud bursts of sound
- 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
Changes in 1.0.6.2 Beta (August 5th, 2022):
CRASH FIXES
- 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
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)
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added text formatting to various messages
- fixed some minor display issues with text layout
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- minor performance improvements in some areas
OTHER
- ensure creatures move away from stars if too close
- improved error reporting
- improved profiling to enable frame capture using RenderDoc
- added extra checks with multi-file loading for mods, giving better feedback on data error
Changes in 1.0.6.3 (August 10th, 2022):
CRASH FIXES
- 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
FLEET AND SHIP 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
- 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
TROOPS
- 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
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)
OTHER
- fixed story events sometimes being generated in the wrong location (e.g. ancient debris fields at homeworld)
- fixed minor text formatting issues
- further improved planet quality for independent colonies (always suitable for native population)
- added extra tooltip descriptions for character traits Corrupt (Scientist) and Double Agent
Changes in 1.0.6.4 (August 12th, 2022):
CRASH AND BUG FIXES
- 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
COLONIZATION
- 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
OTHER
- ensure correct infantry image always used in research screen for troop research projects
- fixed scuttle button sometimes not working for single ships or bases
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
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)
You can download the latest update here
Changes in 1.0.6.4:
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
Whilst I’m sure they have many dlc waiting in the wings I would have thought there’d be total horror amongst players to charge 15.99 or so for some races and missions when the game isn’t nearly near working as expected
Is it playable yet? Should I start in now or wait some more?
are just a miserable bastard like myself
are just a miserable bastard like myself
miserablebastards.com was our second choice for the name of the site
I’ll have a look this weekend - I maybe enjoying it more than martok without carrying any distant universe baggage
Changes in 1.0.6.6 (August 26th, 2022):
PERFORMANCE
- significant performance improvements, especially for large late-game galaxies
- 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
FLEETS, FLEET TACTICS AND FIGHTERS
- 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
- increased number of ships in default Attack fleet template
- changed default engagement range for Invasion Fleets from 50% Fuel Range to Nearby
COLONIZATION
- 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
SHIP BEHAVIOR
- mining ships now more careful to select mining targets within fuel range, including whether inside nebulae clouds
GAME EVENTS
- 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
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- ensure empires have different colors and flags even when multiple empires of same race
- fixed non-clipped rendering artifacts in Start New Game screen
- made galaxy nebula clouds more visible
SHIP DESIGN
- ensured default design templates for defensive bases include Ion Defense components
OTHER
- 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 have launching 1.0.6.4
I hear what you say and I do agree the UI takes getting used to, especially for a player of DWU, but you are doing the game (and yourself) short IMO. Cause I do think you would enjoy the game. You're just not ready and willing to take a good hard look yet. (No offense meant)
Getting to grips with how the UI works and its philosphy takes a few games, but when it clicks the UI actually isnt that bad at all. It's just very different than DWU.
You can go into editor and remove it
You can go into editor and remove it
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 crash when determining random docking position for ship
- fixed crash when drawing empire economy
- fixed crash when showing some tour screens
RESEARCH
- 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 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 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.
- fixed some research projects not generating with all required prerequisite paths
- slightly reduced research priority for diplomacy techs
- slightly reduced research priority for some planetary facilities, especially research facilities
- 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
MILITARY BALANCE
- slightly adjusted construction balance for military ship types: generally fewer escorts and more larger ships
- increased military ship building levels
FLEETS
- further tweaked default fleet templates: larger Attack and Invade fleets
- 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
COLONY INVASIONS
- 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)
PLANETARY 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
EXPLORATION
- 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
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- 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
OTHER
- 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
Changes in 1.0.6.9 (September 8th, 2022):
CRASH FIXES
- fixed a new crash when generating new game with research settings of 'All Projects Visible' and 'Fixed Research Paths'
- fixed rare crash when fleet checks whether should invade colony
- fixed rare crash when displaying trade offer with independent colony locations
RESEARCH
- fixed a new missing project paths issue on tech tree when generated using settings 'Only Next Projects Visible' (level 2+ was missing)
- 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.
- reduced scaling of research project bonus requirement amounts based on galaxy size (now scales less than in the previous beta)
There will be additional data changes to the research tree in the future as we have also heard the feedback that customers would prefer fewer missing techs or truncated trees when set to Random research. We plan to add more fallback paths so that Random research mainly involves different research paths with only a few missing techs that have to be gained through other means (such as espionage, trade, exploration or salvage).
1.0.8.0 Public Beta Update Available
Post by Erik Rutins » Fri Aug 26, 2022 3:00 pm
Hi everyone,
Please try this new beta and let us know if it helps your game.
To facilitate frequent beta iterations as needed, this beta is only available for now on Steam ( 1079 is not on GOG). All Matrix customers also have a free Steam key available (through your My Page) which can be activated if desired to install DW2 via Steam and test this Beta there.
On Steam, you can switch to it by going to Distant Worlds 2 in your Steam Library, right-clicking on it, choosing Properties -> Betas -> then choosing "beta - v.1.0.8.0" from the drop-down list and allowing Steam to update your game. If it updates correctly, you should see 1.0.8.0 listed as your version in-game on the bottom right.
On GOG, you can switch to it by going to Distant Worlds 2 in your GOG Library, selecting Distant Worlds 2, then clicking on the button next to "Play" that looks like two horizontal lines with small offset circles, choosing Manage Installation -> Configure then picking "Beta - v1.0.8.0" from the Beta channels drop-down list and allowing GOG to update.
As a reminder, DW2 version 1.0.5.0 and later requires .Net 6.0. It should automatically be installed by both GOG Galaxy and Steam clients. However, If it fails or the game doesn't run. You can download and install IT from here: https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/down ... -installer
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you still experience crashes with 1.0.6.2 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. 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 the command line option below to switch back to DirectX 11. 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
Changes in 1.0.8.0 (October 14th, 2022):
CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash that sometimes occurred when declaring war
DIPLOMACY AND REPUTATION
- rebalanced all reputation impacts from various events
- capped maximum and minimum reputation levels
- 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
- 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
- updated Empire Reputation Galactopedia article to include explanation of Slavery and Extermination colony population policies
- ensure all techs valued properly in trade deal screen (none should be zero unless truly worthless to other faction)
START NEW GAME SCREEN
- ensure player starting relation level for other empires (Start New Game screen) excludes pirate protection and selects correct trade treaty (RTA, LTA, FTA)
- in Start New Game screen now use tooltips to indicate when large galaxies may cause performance issues on less capable systems
UI IMPROVEMENTS
- 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
- 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
EXPLORATION
- ensure range for discovering lost colony exceeds exploration range so that exploration ships always discover
OTHER
- avoid using reserved spending to build planetary facilities when automation is Suggest. Instead wait until have funds then suggest to player
after creating colony ships with ion shields i can now enter the gas clouds and colonise the perfect planet
thankfully the AI has enough sense to have ion shields on the freighters that are bringing in supplies for the fledgling planet
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