Distant Worlds 2 News

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)

Changes in 1.0.6.4 (August 12th, 2022):

ENGINE UPGRADE
- Upgraded engine to Stride 4.1.0.1, which requires .NET 6.0. Please see the important notes above.

RENDERING AND GAME SETTINGS
- added Vulkan/DXVK rendering option in game settings
- integrated new command line option to use DirectX11, which resets any registry settings to use DXVK. To use add /use-dx11 as a command-line argument to DistantWorlds2.exe
- persisted some previously unsaved game settings (Control Center List item size, rendering option toggles)
- Auto-detect and warn when PC is missing a vendor-specific display driver (i.e. when only Available adapter is 'Microsoft Basic Render Driver')

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- minor performance improvements in some areas
- avoid precaching some models and textures when have low video memory
- added some extra game settings to allow disabling some rendering effects
- extended multi-threading to better utilize CPU cores and provide better performance
- improved texture memory management to improve performance and further minimize crashes
- enabled early exit from many multi-threaded tasks to provide more responsiveness in very large games when exiting to main menu or initiating load or save
- improved performance when calculating construction yard wait times for incoming ships, thus improving responsiveness in very large games
- Improved rendering performance by implementing shader instancing when drawing galaxy map highlights (list items) and empire territory circles/lines. These improvements are especially evident in large games when zoomed out to the galaxy level
- improved performance when opening very large lists in Control Center (e.g. civilian ships)

CRASH AND BUG FIXES
- fixed various crashes relating to Stride rendering
- fixed rare crash when resolving ship mission commands
- fixed rare crash when calculating ship collision avoidance factors
- fixed bug where location effects could sometimes linger for ships, disrupting subsequent movement
- fixed crash when determining threat level for enemy ship
- fixed crash when checking whether research project prerequisites have been researched
- fixed rare crash when escorting target
- fixed rare crash when calculating ship strength including fighters
- fixed rare crash when drawing diplomatic relation details
- fixed crash when click on non-item area of Resource Flow selection list
- fixed rare crash when executing some game events
- fixed crash when signalling docking completion for a ship
- fixed rare crash when use planet destroyer
- fixed crash when ship evaluates nearby threats
- fixed issue where some older savegames could not be loaded
- improved locking to reduce contention and fix crashes
- fixed crash when checking ships within range at a location
- fixed crash when finding shortest docking wait queue at a location
- fixed rare crash when calculating jump path between systems
- fixed crash when reviewing system visibility after ship exits hyperjump
- fixed crash when drawing location badges
- fixed rare crash when creating new colony
- fixed crash when ship reviews its fleet escort
- fixed crash when recording ship revert mission
- fixed crash when checking for abandoned ships at location
- fixed crash when fleet considers whether to retreat
- fixed crash when updating system summary data
- fixed rare crash when loading ship designs
- fixed crash when calculating construction yard wait times
- fixed crash when calculating stock levels
- fixed crash when removing list items
- fixed crash when merging temporary locations
- fixed crash when resolving character location description
- fixed crash when generating message log user interface
- fixed crash when ship evaluates nearby threats
- fixed rare crash when showing research screen
- fixed rare crash while ship is determining system jump path
- fixed a number of multi-threading-related crashes
- fixed rare crash when processing ship movement and energy consumption
- fixed crash when ship identifies nearby threats
- improved context-locking for rendering to further reduce DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED errors
- enabled capture of DirectX Debug information when switched on
- improved error reporting with more detail
- fixed rare crash when a ship refuels

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added text formatting to various messages
- fixed some minor display issues with text layout
- added further tooltips to Design List screen explaining Retrofit and Status columns
- ensure that accepting a request to help another empire battle the Hive threat also ends any war between you
- fixed sorting in Defensive Bases list for Name and Distance From Spaceport
- added more detailed inline text formatting for markup language
- extended text formatting to messages
- updated Design List screen to more clearly indicate toggling for some items (underlines for Role Design, Auto Retrofit, Is Active columns)
- added extra filter in New Mining Locations list: 'All Resources - No Asteroids'
- improved selectability of fleets and other items at galaxy level
- added popup selection when click multiple items at same point
- selection popup list is ordered by type, with fleets, stars and spaceports first
- ensure player empire territory marked green (friendly) in Diplomacy map overlay
- now include Autosaves for Continue Game button, i.e. if an autosave is the most recent savegame then that game will be resumed
- better selection of default user interface size based on screen resolution (i.e. larger default size for larger screens)
- fixed bug where ships sometimes could not be selected at system level
- fixed Mining Locations list sometimes showing wrong items when filtering by a specific resource
- properly filter out unknown resources in Colonies list
- Adjusted some galaxy map overlays so that properly fade out as zoom in (long range scanners, diplomacy, exploration)
- Adjusted general opacity for some map overlays (long range scanners, diplomacy, exploration)
- added Continue Game button to main menu (load most recent savegame)

FLEET, SHIP AND STARFIGHTER BEHAVIOR
- fixed ships sometimes incorrectly reassigning mission when get too close to planets
- reduced collision avoidance contention when ships are docking at base, thus improving throughput
- further extended logic for ships to avoid exiting hyperjump when mission changes: will now remain in hyperjump when change - mission to move to coordinates (at same location), even though do not have specific target
- fixed fleet ships sometimes getting stuck in deep space unable to jump
- fixed damaged fleet ships that cannot jump to repair location causing repeated fleet repair missions
- improved fleet target selection so that do not upgrade attack against enemy ship to attack against entire fleet unless lead ship of enemy fleet is visible, thus better assessing whether need to refuel or gather before attack
- now ensure ships always get properly refueled by fuel tanker, even when very close to planet
- fighters now better at continuing to escort carriers when supporting ongoing Raid, Capture or Bombard missions (fighters no longer stop idle in space)
- fixed bug where fleets were sometimes calculating fuel range incorrectly and thus taking on missions that were too distant
- fighters now never allow collision avoidance to prevent them from boarding their carrier, thus avoiding holding up the carrier's jump, etc
- ships now remain in hyperjump when assign new mission if target is at same location as previous mission, e.g. thus have all fleet ships continue their jump to threat investigation location after first ship exits jump and upgrades mission to attack threat (no need to exit jump and then restart new jump)
- added new ship mission type: Explore Location - explores all items at a location, useful for manually exploring asteroid fields. Select exploration ship and right-click on an item for popup menu with this mission
- fleets no longer incorrectly refuel when assign prepare and attack mission against target outside a star system
- default designs for medium and large freighters now have more fuel tanks to give greater range than small freighters
- fixed bug where some ship/base retrofits were not completing properly, i.e. some new components were not being added
- improved willingness of construction ships without hyperdrives to build new bases at own location
- carriers no longer launch fighters when exit jumps at transit locations on way to final attack target, thus speeding up transit jumps (only launch fighters when real threats or arrive at final attack target location)
- creating new fleet from multiple selected ships now also properly updates action buttons under Selection Panel to match new fleet

TROOPS AND TROOP TRANSPORTS
- fixed some non-playable race troop sizes (were zero, thus very fast recruitment, etc)
- ensure troop recruitment costs always paid, even when manually recruited
- troops named with proper numeric prefix that relates to number of troop units in empire
- Infantry defense strengths increased
- fixed automated non-fleet troop transports sometimes getting into endless loop of load/unload troops at a colony
- troops at colonies now more likely to be ungarrisoned when not needed to meet defensive requirements or rebellion supression (e.g. shortly after conquest), thus freeing them up for reloading on troop transports
- more careful auto-loading and unloading of troops for automated troop transports that are not part of a fleet. Avoid getting in endless loop of loading/unloading troops

DIPLOMACY
- empires now properly decide whether to honor Defense Treaties, will consider whether to declare war on aggressors against their allies. Declining to honor treaty negatively impacts relations and reputation, whereas honoring the treaty (declaring war on aggressor) improves relations and reputation. When war diplomacy is not automated, player will be prompted with modal message window where they must choose whether to honor treaty or not
- value of offer to end war with 3rd party in diplomacy trade deal screen now valued much lower. Other empire also has to be interested in an end to your war with 3rd party, i.e. they are friends with 3rd party and concerned about the war
- Non Aggression treaties no longer offered when diplomatic strategy for a faction is set to Conquer
- altered acceptance levels for diplomatic trade deals with other empires: angry empires require much higher value offered, friendly empires no longer offer very favourable deals
- increased negative diplomatic incident amount from invading colonies, whether the colony is independent or owned by another faction. Negative incident amount now also scales with colony size, i.e. larger colonies generate stronger incident. However when at war with faction then incident is much lower, as is negative reputation impact
- increased negative diplomatic incident amount from colony bombardment. Note that this is not just a constant value, but rather is tied to actual amount of population loss
- fixed bug where special locations could be traded repeatedly in Diplomacy trade screen
- fixed bug where could not refuel ships at pirate bases when have Military Refuelling agreement
- ending a War or signing a Non Aggression treaty now clears any dangerous locations for other empire, thus preventing automated fleets from unnecessarily investigating locations that are no longer a threat

SHIP DESIGN
- ensure Upgrade Design button properly accounts for components that have matching category but not the necessary capabilities, e.g. Star Marine Barracks that are crew quarters category but are used differently

COLONIZATION AND SUITABILITY
- ensure some story planets have proper quality levels to eventually become colonized by specified race
- fixed automated colonization sometimes colonizing targets slightly below suitability threshold in empire policy
- improved loading colonists for new colony targets so that load most suitable race even when is not dominant race at load colony
- tweaked independent colony suitability for some races so that always have suitability of at least +20 (economically viable)
- colony ships now less likely to retrofit and more likely to colonize any targets within range before refuelling (i.e. do not refuel if already have colonization target within range)
- improved willingness of automated Colony Ships to colonize queued colonization targets that are independent colonies but are unsuitable for empire races (does not matter because bulk of population is pre-existing well-suited native race)
- fixed bug where too many colony ships were sometimes being built
- fixed bug where colony ships could sometimes load the wrong race of colonists for queued colonization targets
- when Colonization Automation is manual, automated colony ships no longer load colonists except for queued colonization targets


CHARACTERS
- better handling of imprisoned characters when reconquer colony (ensure properly removed from prisoners of previous empire)
- properly exclude imprisoned characters when determining defensive bonuses at colony (as shown in Troop Report screen)
- added extra tooltip descriptions for character traits Corrupt (Scientist) and Double Agent

MANUAL PLAY IMPROVEMENTS
- added action buttons for multi-selected ships: scrap and retire selected ships
- added new right-click mission for multi-selected ships: capture (when ships have capability)

AI IMPROVEMENTS
- now properly handle situation when empire was planning to build expensive planetary facility at a colony, but lost colony while saving up construction funds

GENERAL BUG FIXES
- now properly exclude ShipHulls_Art.xml file when not in art mode
- fixed occasional error messages relating to regional settings on non-English PCs
- fixed incorrect URL for .Net 6.0 installation

SOUND EFFECTS
- limit number of simultaneous sound effects of same type to avoid very high effect volume, especially when first zooming into a location
- further reduced simultaneous sound effects that can sometimes create loud bursts of sound
- added Assault Pod sound effect
- added shield strike and construction sound effects
- fixed weapon firing sound effects not playing unless weapon also had accompanying particle effect

MODDING IMPROVEMENTS
- added new Game Event features for story team
- now allow loading multiple XML data files per type to better support modding
- enabled IsPlayable flag in Races.xml file to better support modding. Note that races list in Start New Game screen does not scroll horizontally, so can currently only add 3-4 more races before disappear off right side of screen, but will add scroll support in future
- added better support for custom mod-loading through command-line arguments
- added extra checks with multi-file loading for mods, giving better feedback on data errors
- implemented better approach for resetting static base data (loaded from XML files) when start a new game in same session (no longer reload from files), thus better supporting modding

OTHER
- remove HighDPI aware registry flag for current user (no need for this as DW2 now handles this itself)
- ensure correct infantry image always used in research screen for troop research projects
- fixed scuttle button sometimes not working for single ships or bases
- fixed story events sometimes being generated in the wrong location (e.g. ancient debris fields at homeworld)
- fixed minor text formatting issues
- ensure creatures move away from stars if too close
- improved error reporting
- improved profiling to enable frame capture using RenderDoc
- improved error reporting in some situations
- properly clear room background when speak with independent colony for non-playable race
- capped maximum number of user-defined starting empires in Start New Game screen to 20
- fixed a typo regarding the Technocracy government
- Military Academy facilities are now 1 per Empire as originally intended
- refresh 'Continue Game' button tooltip with latest savegame when exit to main menu
- properly refresh empire territory path lines after load game
- fixed shift key sometimes not working when editing text
- reduced volume for construction sound effects
- fixed empires using independent flags
- fixed reputation increase from destroying pirate ships and bases
- fixed minor typo in game start text when have single additional colony
- corrected Kiadian typo in diplomatic research projects
- ensured proper game icon is shown in taskbar
- Added extra error reporting for some rendering-related crashes

Hello everyone,

here's the changelog of the latest update:

FLEETS, SHIPS AND FIGHTERS
• Fixed bug that was sometimes blocking some fleet missions when Military Attack automation was manually controlled
• Prevent fleet ships from escorting their Core ships while they are still exiting construction/repair hangar
• 'Join ships to fleet' button now properly filters out any non-military selected ships when adding them to the fleet
• Fixed fighters sometimes using wrong weapons attack range (too low)
• Ensure fighters retain capture mission, assisting carriers to lower shields and capture target

CHARACTERS AND INTELLIGENCE MISSIONS
• Ensure character bonuses at location (colony, ship, fleet, base) only apply to characters from own empire (e.g. not foreign ambassadors)
• Altered intelligence mission difficulty thresholds so that spies more willing to attempt riskier missions. See updated tooltip for Mission Difficulty Caution in Intelligence Missions section of Empire Policy screen for new levels
• Ensure specified percentage of spies properly used for counter-intelligence (Counter Intelligence Ratio in Empire Policy)

SPACE CREATURES
• Ensure creatures do not get too far from horizontal plane (vertical offset)
• Ensure creatures do not go too close to stars, thus being difficult to attack

OTHER
• Research summary in header now shows when a project is being crash researched
• Extended research hover summary in header to also show queued research projects
• Fixed minor text display bugs in some game events
• Fixed Prime Research Station story event sending repeated messages when Suppress Messages turned on in game settings

We are glad to announce the new Major Update for Distant Worlds 2, this update will feature many gameplay fixes and improvements to Fleet and Ship Behavior (including Fuel Tankers and Starfighters), the Private Economy and Resource distribution, Intelligence MIssions, Colonization and Migration, Tourism, Character skills.  Also, some significant performance improvements, especially for the late game.

We hope you like it, enjoy and let us know what do you think about it.

Changes in 1.0.4.8:

This update includes many improvements in fleet coordination and fleet and ship behavior. Some of the issues addresses were due to bugs in the game, but others were due to confusion caused by unclear labeling or explanation on our part, which the below documentation and changes should resolve. Please read through the explanations below as well as the change list to fully understand how fleet and ship tactical settings are meant to function.

Fleet Engagement Range vs. Engagement Range

There is now Fleet Engagement Range (re-named) at the fleet level and Engagement Range at the ship level.
When a ship is in a fleet, the Fleet Engagement Range will override the ship's Engagement Range.  The ship will only use its own Engagement Range when it is not in a Fleet.
The Fleet Engagement Range determines at a strategic level what missions/targets the fleet is in range of taking on.  Previously, there was a gap at the system level where fleet and ship engagement ranges could conflict or override each other, which would result in the most restrictive of the two being used. That has been resolved. Now, if there is a target in the system and there is a fleet in the system with Fleet Engagement Range that would allow attacking within that system, the fleet will go attack that target as a fleet even if the individual ship settings would not allow individual ships to respond.

Manual Fleets and Military Attack Policies

It's important to note that a Manual fleet will not automatically respond outside of its own system. DW2 assumes that a Manual fleet is fully under manual orders for anything out of system. If you would like a fleet to automatically respond outside of its own system, it needs to be set to one of the Automatic fleet roles (for example, Attack or Defend) and its Fleet Engagement Range must allow it.
Also, if you have your Military Attacks Policy in the Military section of your policies set to Manual, then no fleets of any kind will respond or attack outside their own systems without being manually ordered to do so.
In order to have fleets fully responding outside their systems, you need to have:

1. Fleet Engagement Ranges set to allow it
2. Each Fleet needs to be set to one of the Automatic roles
3. The Military Attacks policy cannot be set to Manual

By default, all these things are true, but if you have changed these settings please be aware of their intended interactions and results.

Fleet Attack Stance

This was no longer performing any necessary function given the other settings and their capabilities. It was however adding confusion for players, so it was removed.

Fleet Retreat Strategy

There was an issue preventing this working as intended, which should now be resolved.  It should also be noted that this has a different function than the Retreat When setting at the ship level. It was therefore renamed to Fleet Retreat Strategy to avoid confusion.
Fleet Retreat Strategy affects when the entire fleet will consider changing orders to escape a location based on overall strength comparison at that location. Individual ships will still follow their Retreat When setting in terms of responding to damage caused to that ship.
Note that Manual fleets will not at this time retreat as a fleet unless ordered to do so by the player. This is working as intended, as we generally lean towards manual meaning that the player has full control and gets to decide when the fleet retreats. All automated fleets will respect the Fleet Retreat Strategy.

Position within Fleet

We realized that the previous UI terminology used "Role" in two different instances. Role now refers only to the general type of ship (i.e. Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser).
The position of a ship in a fleet within the fleet formation is now more intuitively called "Position within Fleet" in the ship's tactical settings. The previous "Attack" has been renamed to "Core" to make it more clear that this position is in the center of the fleet, whereas "Close Escort" is the inner ring and "Picket" is the outer ring of the formation. In most cases, we recommend placing your point defense-oriented ships in the Picket or Close Escort positions and keeping your most valuable Capital ships and long-range standoff ships in the Core.

Ship Tactical Setting Apply Buttons

We recognized that the importance of the tactical settings at the ship level was not matched by the UI in terms of the ease of adjusting them post-construction. There are now three new buttons available for any ship in a fleet:

- Apply these tactical settings to all ships of this design in the fleet
- Apply these tactical settings to all ships of this role in the fleet
- Apply these tactical settings to all ships of this position in the fleet
- Apply these tactical settings to all ships in the fleet

This only affects the ship level tactical setting. You can see these by selecting a ship that is in a fleet and looking at its tactical settings.
We also plan to add the ability to mass apply tactical setting changes whenever multiple ships are selected through any method in the future.


PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- improved general performance, especially in very large late-game galaxies
- fixed rare bug that was sometimes slowing general game performance
- improved performance when calculating construction yard wait times, especially for large games

FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed Prepare and Attack fleet missions to properly evaluate need to refuel
- fleets now more permissive when evaluating Prepare and Attack missions. If sufficient fleet ships in target system and can handle attack against target then less inclined to first refuel or gather. In other words, now more likely to attack targets in same system directly without first refuelling or gathering, even when some fleet ships are dispersed or need refuelling
- fleets now wait for all fighters to board carriers before hyperjumping
- when preparing to hyperjump, carriers now move more slowly while waiting for all fighters to board, thus making it easier for fighters to catch up with carrier
- fighters boarding carriers now move at maximum speed when returning to carrier from far away
- fixed fighters sometimes incorrectly boarding carriers and then immediately relaunching
- fleets now more careful to have enough available ships when auto-assigning attacks against targets
- fleets more careful about completing attack missions (e.g. raid) when all fleet ships have completed the mission type
- ensure disable action buttons when select fleet of another empire
- fixed some additional situations where fleets would not engage threats properly
- broadened Guard mission so that fleets/ships will engage threats at same location, even when threat is not currently attacking guard target
- fixed bug where fleet engagement range was sometimes not properly overriding ship engagement range
- ensure fleets properly use fleet engagement range when evaluating whether to attack targets (i.e. do not downgrade to use each ship's engagement range)
- manually assigning refuel/repair/retrofit missions to automated fleets no longer immediately changes their role to Manual. All other mission types remain the same and will automatically change their role to Manual if currently automated (Attack, Defend, Raid, Invade)
- fixed bug where fleets would sometimes not engage threats, even when within engagement range
- ensure that automated fleets do not get caught in attack/retreat loop
- fixed manually assigning Guard missions to fleets sometimes not being assigned to individual fleet ships
- when investigating dangerous locations fleets are now more careful to ensure have adequate strength to handle expected threats
- ship missions that require docking at a colony (e.g. load/unload troops, load/unload colonists, etc) now more flexible about ship position, does not necessarily need to move to new position if already close to planet. This change helps these mission types complete faster
- troops reserved for pickup by troop transport now immediately unreserved when transport destroyed (previously took a few seconds)

FLEET AND SHIP TACTICAL SETTINGS
- removed unused Fleet Stance tactical setting
- in Tactical Settings dialog, the orange warning highlight for Fleet Engagement Range when the Military Attack policy is manually-controlled (thus disabling auto fleet engagement) is now used even when selected fleet is automated
- updated Galactopedia topic for Tactical Settings to reflect updated ship and fleet tactical terminology and functionality
- added comprehensive tooltips explaining each item in the Tactical Settings screen
- ensure Tactical Settings dialog closes when select ship or fleet of another empire
- clarified wording of explanations for Fleet Engagement Range in Galactopedia and Tactical Dialog tooltips (manual fleets auto-engaging within current system)
- added tooltip to explain that Fleet Retreat tactical setting is not used by manually-controlled fleets
- added tooltip to Fleet Engagement Range to explain when this is used by fleets
- changed labeling for some fleet tactical settings for extra clarity
- ensure Tactical Settings dialog not displayed when open Ship Design screen
- to reduce confusion role in ship tactical settings has been replaced with position within fleet
- added extra 'Apply Settings' buttons to Tactical Settings dialog when displaying tactics for ship that is part of a fleet: allow applying settings to all fleet ships with same role, design, position in fleet.

FUEL TANKERS
- automated Fuel Tankers in a fleet are no longer set to manual control when you set their fleet to Manual or when manually assign a fleet mission. This allows Fuel Tankers to remain automated and auto-delivering fuel to the fleet ships while the rest of the fleet is under manual control. Note that you can still set fleet Fuel Tankers to manual control when individually selecting them
- ensure properly exclude fuel tankers when generating action button for fleet retrofit (fleet fuel tankers operate independently and retrofit on their own schedule)
- automated Fuel Tankers now retrofit and repair as needed even when assigned to a fleet
- additional tweaks to Fuel Tanker evaluation of when to refuel various ship roles, e.g. exploration ships now not refueled until lower fuel level, thus spending less time waiting for fuel tankers
- Fuel Tankers now periodically check whether target ship still needs refueling, cancelling mission if needed
- Fuel Tankers no longer refuel other Fuel Tankers unless they are completely out of fuel (including no fuel in cargo)
- Fuel Tankers more careful to avoid locations that have damaging storm effects that they cannot handle
- Fuel Tankers now more careful to avoid attempting to refuel ships that will soon enter hyperspace, instead prefer idle ships or ships that have already reached mission destination
- Fuel Tankers now more careful to avoid traveling to hostile locations when attempting to join up with fleet. Will instead move to nearby location free of threats
- ensure Fuel Tankers can refuel ships even when in deep space far from any normal location

COLONIZATION, MIGRATION AND TOURISM
- improved selection of queued colonization targets by existing colony ships that already have population loaded. Will now also unload population if necessary so that can load more suitable population from existing colonies
- added new mission type to unload passengers for colony ships with colonists onboard. Access by selecting colony ship and right-clicking on one of your empire's colonies for pop-up mission list
- altered auto-assigned migration missions to prefer higher suitability destination colonies
- now exclude Colony Ships as available to colonize new colony while loading colonists (assign mission button in New Colonies list)
- when colonization range limits are enforced (game startup settings) now use straight-line distance to evaluate whether potential colony is in range of existing colonies (instead of path time, which caused issues when potential colonies were in nebulae)
- fixed bug where colony ships would sometimes load wrong race as colonists
- further improved race selection for new colonies, even for independent colonies, i.e. attempt to use most suitable race
- further improved automated selection of colonizing race for Colony Ships based on queued and non-queued colonization targets (i.e. attempt to select most suitable race for new colonies). This applies even when you have custom population policies at your colonies that would otherwise prioritize other races for pickup (e.g. Resettle)
- now prevent unloading colonists at colonies that cannot accept them due to either blocking population policy (e.g. Do Not Accept) or colony already being at maximum population
- disabled ships (cannot move) no longer count as threats and thus do not show up on threats list or block colonization or construction at the location
- tourism missions now properly ignore colony population policy settings (tourism to destinations with policy of Do Not Accept, etc)
- ensure tourism destinations are selected more evenly by passenger ships (resort bases + scenic colonies)

ECONOMY, COLONIES, RESOURCES AND CONSTRUCTION
- colony corruption and support costs now scale similarly to colony revenue beyond 50% maximum population. This means that net colony revenue no longer decreases as population increases, though it will increase much more slowly.
- reduced luxury resource consumption rate at colonies by 33% to improve resource logistics across a variety of galaxy map settings and resource prevalences
- reduced default stock level for fuel storage at mining stations
- ensured spaceports not at colonies have more storage space and higher stock levels for fuel and construction resources
- freighters transporting resources to locations now allow some over-delivery of amounts beyond cargo capacity for each resource. This especially improves efficiency for locations that are space-constrained and thus have stock levels the same as the cargo capacity (e.g. mining stations, research stations)
- ensure resource ordering for colonies and bases requests excess amount above stock levels to reduce frequency of reordering and thus reduce freighter demand
- fixed bug where destinations were sometimes failing to receive resources via freighter
- added warnings to New Colonies list and Selection Panel indicating when a planet has low suitability for colonization and the economic consequences
- new resources are now properly discovered and used when you acquire a ship or base with the previously unknown resource in its cargo (e.g. abandoned base, story event, etc)
- fixed bases built at independent colonies (e.g. research stations) incorrectly using cargo, stock levels and cargo capacities of parent colony (should only do so when parent colony is own empire)
- ensured Resources and Stock Levels dialog does not incorrectly indicate that some resource amounts on hand are below the stock level
- Resources and Stock Levels dialog now includes explanatory note about foreign sources in tooltip for Mined and Known Locations
- colonies now always attempt to stock super luxury resources when available (Korabbian Spice, Loros Fruit, Zentabia Fluid), even when they can meet their target development level through other, more accessible luxury resources
- ensure automated construction does not build too many ships at once (minimize big swings in cash on hand, etc)

EMPIRE BONUSES
- all maintenance savings bonuses now applied by dividing by (1 + bonus amount) instead of multiplying by bonus amount (ship maintenance, troop maintenance, planetary facility maintenance). This means that maintenance savings can never be greater than full maintenance costs (no negative maintenance)
- fixed some bonus types being applied incorrectly (TroopRecoveryRate, ShipEnergyUsage)
- ensure that empire-wide bonuses from research are properly integrated into overall empire bonuses (e.g. Troop Maintenance Savings from Improved Logistics project, etc)

CHARACTER SKILLS AND DIMINISHING RETURNS
- character skills at a location are now applied with diminishing values. Thus the best character for a skill applies 100% of their skill level, but all subsequent characters only apply a steadily diminishing proportion of their skill for that area (thus 100%, 50%, 25%, etc). This means that is is often better to spread characters across multiple locations instead of concentrating them at a single location, e.g. admirals and generals in multiple fleets, scientists in multiple research stations, etc.
- updated Galactopedia topic Characters to explain diminishing character skills for a location
- slowed growth of character skill levels

INTELLIGENCE MISSIONS
- decreased success chance for intelligence missions. Diminishing value begins at 75% instead of previous 90%. Thus spies must have much higher skill levels to reach high success chance

SHIP DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS
- tweaked default design templates for colony ships and troop transports to maximize chance of sufficient reactor energy output to power hyperdrives at full speed and thus extend travel range
- further improved auto-design for troop transports to maximize fuel range by ensuring hyperdrives have full reactor energy supply
- fixed faulty weapon damage graph for tractor beams in Ship Design screen

EXPLORATION
- fixed exploration ships sometimes pausing exploration of home system when have not yet found fuel source
- fixed black hole vortex range so that exploration ships can properly complete mission

OTHER CHANGES
- suppress incorrect initial mouse-up when enter research screen from main view header (would sometimes incorrectly queue the hovered research project)
- fixed text display bug for colony events reported as Galaxy News (Patriotic Wave, Predictive History, etc)
- limit maximum number of items displayed in Summary View (bottom-middle of screen) at galaxy level (colonies, spaceports, fleets) to ensure that on lower resolution displays this does not become overwhelming in the late game
- altered Ghost Fleet Base story event to always be generated at location with fuel source
- ensure raid countdown processed for bases

ART BUNDLE CHANGES
- fixed various issues in the art bundles with incorrect texture sizes as well as uncompressed or unstreamed texture settings
- substantially reduced texture memory usage for creatures, nebulae and effects

A new update of Distant Worlds 2 (1.0.3.7) has been released, here's what's new:

CRASH FIXES
- reduced likelihood of hangs before autosaving
- added fix for rare memory corruption when animating space creatures
- fixed crash when adding diplomatic incident
- fixed crash when updating ship engine exhaust
- fixed crash when calculating ship collision avoidance
- fixed crash when resolving character mission location description
- fixed crash when drawing troop summary
- fixed crash when determining resource prices
- fixed crash when determining fleet systems within engagement range
- fixed crash when evaluating threats to ship or base
- fixed crash when fixing ships in a location
- fixed crash when updating location for fighters onboard a carrier
- fixed crash when rendering message
- fixed crash when firing weapons
- fixed crash when rendering character traits
- fixed crash when determining retrofit resources for a ship or base
- fixed crash when finding nearest refuelling point
- fixed crash when drawing empire relation in diplomacy screen
- fixed crash when determining empire mining targets
- fixed rare crash when loading some older savegames
- fixed crash when switching camera modes
- reworked some rendering to further minimize DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED crashes
- fixed crash when evaluating threats
- fixed crash when calculating location visibility level
- fixed crash when rendering research screen
- fixed crash when examining recent trade deals
- fixed crash when extracting resources
- fixed crash when identifying independent repair bases
- fixed crash when fulfilling resource orders
- fixed crash when sorting items while determining mining targets
- fixed crash when executing action
- fixed crash when calculating construction yard wait time
- fixed crash when identifying refuelling points
- fixed crash when rendering ship or base summary
- fixed crash when drawing construction yard summary
- fixed crash when updating ship engine exhaust
- fixed crash when preparing ship for retrofit
- fixed crash when changing ship empire
- fixed crash when obtaining fleet template designs per role
- fixed crash when auto-assigning scout mission to exploration ship
- fixed crash when launching assault pod
- fixed crash when updating user interface controls
- fixed crash when refreshing graphics setup
- fixed crash when checking whether ship is in battle
- fixed crash when checking for appearance of hive threat
- fixed crash when completing ship command
- fixed crash when planet removed in game editor
- fixed crash when calculating ship collision avoidance
- fixed crash when drawing system exploration data
- fixed crash when drawing system summary
- fixed crash when editing bonuses in game editor
- fixed crash when drawing research button
- fixed crash when updating tourism/migration/resource flow data
- fixed crash when adding diplomatic relation incident
- fixed crash when rendering creature effects
- fixed crash when rendering map overlay buttons
- fixed crash when reviewing army templates
- fixed crash when updating character bonuses
- fixed crash when processing ships and bases
- fixed crash when inflicting ion damage from nebula storms
- fixed crash when removing weapon blast from location
- fixed crash when ship unloads passengers
- fixed crash when generating new character
- fixed crash when building facility
- updated Harmony library to resolve some problems


PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- improved general performance, especially in very large games
- further adjustments to some map overlays to improve performance (long range scanners, exploration, diplomacy)
- added new default system badge mode (Basic) with smaller, simplified badges when zoomed out to galaxy level. Extended mode is same as previous Basic mode
- improved general performance relating to fleet operations
- fixed occasional hang when fleets bombard colonies
- fixed occasional performance 'stuttering'
- fixed ship movement sometimes being jerky when zoom into same location
- improved rendering performance for map overlays: exploration, diplomacy long range scanners


SYSTEM BADGES AND MAP OVERLAYS
- fixed clickable regions for new basic system badges
- ensure map buttons retain highlight state when apply changes to graphics settings
- altered map overlay buffer format (long range scanners, exploration, diplomacy) to improve overlay opacity and visibility


SAVEGAMES
- updated autosave timer logic to ensure save at specified intervals. Reminder that paused time does not count towards autosave interval
- now check for low disk space when saving game and send warning message if needed
- more graceful handling of savegame failures for whatever reason


OTHER CHANGES
- fixed slow initial zoom-in when start new game
- now purge old low-priority empire messages
- altered texture streaming memory budget to be more generous when no shared system memory allocated
- waypointing ships now properly slow to a stop while waiting for other fleet ships to arrive
- fixed bug when performing jump pathfinding
- fixed colony bombardment ship range when colony has long range defensive weapons (previously ships were too cautious to approach colony when tactics were Evade)
- updated values for planetary shield facilities
- data fixes to allow planetary destroyer to be built again
- fixed Load Fleet Template dialog to properly load from FleetTemplates sub-folder (same folder as Save Fleet Template)
- exploration and diplomacy map overlays now auto-enable when in relevant UI area
- long range scanner, exploration and diplomacy map overlays now more opaque
- The resource and credit discount on Planet Destroyer hulls has come to an end
- Ship hull fixes for certain freighters and transports
- Fixes to component data typos and some tweaks some of which affect the permissible slot sizes for certain late game weapons
- Additional story event fixes
- Fixes for some facility upgrade issues due to incorrect IDs in the facility data

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
- fixed bug where economy line items were often not being updated (introduced in 1.0.3.1)
- added fixes to greatly reduce number of DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED crashes
- fixed crash when fleet evaluates whether to invade colony
- fixed crash when ship fires intercept weapons
- fixed crash when determine empire migration sources
- fixed crash when getting native creature habitats
- fixed crash when updating user interface controls
- fixed crash when updating ship engine exhaust
- fixed crash with sorting when finding nearest refuelling point
- fixed crash when drawing empire relation
- fixed rare crash when drawing troops and characters
- now handle access denied error when saving game settings or game start settings files

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

- improved rendering performance when in research screen
- slightly improved general performance

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

ADDITIONAL CHANGES
- added Harmony modding support to DW2