Distant Worlds 2

[Martok]

Now it remains to be seen how long before Slitherine finally gives us an updated roadmap on future development.  People want to know what DLC/expansions are coming, and of course the main game still needs a crap-ton of further patching before it's at the same level as (much less better than) DWU. 

[Undercovergeek]

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

[Barthheart]

Is it playable yet? Should I start in now or wait some more?

[Undercovergeek]

I’ve never experienced any of the crashes it’s been more functionality and ui but it’s certainly playable

[Martok]

Out of sheer morbid curiosity, I reinstalled the game...and I ended up annoyed all over again by a lot of the same nonsense as before.  Examples: 


Still can't pan the camera in any direction I want; it remains restricted to within a few degrees of the isometric view.  (So what was the point of going 3D again?) 

Saving/loading/deleting saved game slots are still a PITA due to being almost entirely mouse-based:  There are no keyboard commands for managing them, despite them being a common feature in PC gaming for the past 10-20 years. 

The game still likes to automatically un-pause.  Also, it apparently decides that my clicking anywhere on an event window or pop-up message registers as me hitting the "Play" button. 

Pre-warp is still too slow. 



But hey, planets & ships look nicer now.   

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

Well that's certainly my own thinking, but I feel like I'm in the minority in that regard.  (I hope I"m *not*, but I'm naturally cynical/skeptical about such things.) 

Is it playable yet? Should I start in now or wait some more?

It's been playable for a while now.  I suspect you'd enjoy the game well enough.  (Unless you played a lot of Distant Worlds: Universe, and/or are just a miserable bastard like myself. ) 

[bayonetbrant]

are just a miserable bastard like myself

miserablebastards.com was our second choice for the name of the site

[Undercovergeek]

I’ll have a look this weekend - I maybe enjoying it more than martok without carrying any distant universe baggage

[Martok]

are just a miserable bastard like myself

miserablebastards.com was our second choice for the name of the site

I'm honestly surprised the domain name wasn't already taken.   

I’ll have a look this weekend - I maybe enjoying it more than martok without carrying any distant universe baggage

Honestly, I think that's probably the key factor right there. 


If you've put several hundred hours into the first Distant Worlds game -- like I have -- it's pretty much impossible to not compare it with Distant Worlds 2.  And when Erik & Elliot said their goal with DW2 was to basically just make a better version of the first game, I keep wondering where the "better" is at.  Because so far, I'm genuinely not seeing it. 

If, on the other hand, you've not played DW:U (or have played it only a little), then you're going to enjoy DW2 just fine. 

[Yskonyn]

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.

[ojsdad]

Just tried to fire a game.  I have Independent Colonies set to Very Rare, and twice in a row on galaxy creation, I have an IC in my home system!   

[Undercovergeek]

You can go into editor and remove it

[Undercovergeek]

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

[Martok]

Public beta for 1.0.6.6 is now available: 


https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=5029369#p5029369

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.

Some offense taken.  If you've read my previous posts, you'd know it's not the UI I have a problem with -- that's the one area I acknowledge they did improve upon (at least somewhat). 

[ojsdad]

You can go into editor and remove it

Any time I've tried that, it always leaves a small population behind.

I did try one more galaxy, and ended up with a Human IC in my system.  Yes, I'm Human, so it was easy colony to pickup. 

[Barthheart]

You can go into editor and remove it

But you should not have to.