Distant Worlds 2 News

Hello everyone.
This is the second of two Developer Blogs covering strategy after the release of Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi. As most Distant Worlds players know, the Shakturi are an ancient and terrible threat which was responsible for the last cataclysmic galactic war, the scars and remains of which are visible throughout the current galaxy. The goal of these blogs will be to pull back the curtain a bit on the Shakturi crisis and help you figure out how to defeat these terrifying arch-enemies.
If you don’t want any spoilers regarding the story, you should stop here. If you’d rather try for one of the other two endings, either joining the Shakturi and helping them win or staying out of both the Shakturi Axis and the Freedom Alliance, we’ll mention those only briefly. Our focus will be on how to stop the Shakturi conquering the galaxy.

Genetic Engineering
We discussed the importance of the Genetic engineering research tree in Part 1 when it comes to countering Shakturi influence on the Rift Striders and other space creatures. However, there’s a second part to this tree which gives you the opportunity to make some notable improvements to your empire. You can improve your troops, your militia, your ship crews and marines, your leaders and your population growth. While these are less direct counters to the problems posed by the Shakturi, if time allows they can add up to a significant boost for your forces.

The Ancient Guardians
Soon after the Shakturi emerge from the rifts, you will detect some anomalous magnetic pulses. Investigating these will allow you to make contact with the only remaining fully functional Ancient Guardian artificial intelligence. The Ancient Guardians may even pre-date the previous war against the Shakturi and have been preserving information that is critical to your war efforts.
They will give you the location of a map which will lead you to three special vaults, the Vaults of Creation, Aggression and Concealment. Exploring and opening these vaults before others can will give a special boost in countering the Shakturi advantages. I recommend prioritizing these as soon as you have the opportunity.


The Ancient Guardians will be reluctant to reveal the location of their final vault until the Shakturi bring in their first reinforcement fleet with a Planet Destroyer. Note that the frequency of Shakturi reinforcement fleets depends on the number of beacons the Shakturi control, so the timing will vary from game to game and of course if you take out some of their beacons that will buy you some time.


Either way, once a Shakturi Planet Destroyer arrives in the galaxy, the Ancient Guardians will reveal to you their final most hidden and most dangerous vault – the Vault of the Shakturi Mind.


The sooner you can open this vault, the better. Contained within are two key areas of knowledge. The first is the knowledge to build Mega-Ships like Planet Destroyers. You will get access to two projects once you open the vault. The first is for the special Mega-Ship hull, the second for a special weapon or other component for the Mega-Ship. These will vary depending on the faction you are playing. These projects will start mostly researched thanks to the knowledge in the Vault.


Being able to field Mega-Ships and possibly Planet Destroyers of your own can prove to be a decisive leveler against the Shakturi. Planet Destroyers are the quickest way to take out the Shakturi Beacons, but you’ll need to use them carefully.
Mega-Ships are best used manually for best results, coordinating with your automated fleets to provide them cover and clear defenses before sending them in. Even if you don’t normally design your own ships, you may want to choose your own Mega-Ship design to make sure it has all the capabilities you want it to have. Once a Planet Destroyer arrives at a location with a target, it takes time to charge up its weapon and while these are huge and tough ships, they are not meant to take on entire fleets by themselves and do require some coordination and support. Some Mega-Ships, like those of the Zenox or Quameno, are not about destroying planets at all but give you other unique capabilities to help you hold the line.


The second and most terrible secret revealed in the final vault is the information required to engineer the Xaraktor Virus. This is the only virus known to be targeted at the Shakturi. When you first gain access to research it, understand that it starts out quite dangerous to all living beings. If you have time to develop it further before deploying it, you will find that the improved versions becomes less dangerous to all except the Shakturi. The improved Xaraktor viruses become so dangerous to the Shakturi that a single outbreak could wipe out most of their population if deployed to the right world.
The Xaraktor Virus and Planet Destroyers are both weapons of desperation for the Freedom Alliance, but if you see no other path to the defeat of the Shakturi, it’s better to have these last ditch options than to not have them.
If you fail to open the Vault of the Shakturi Mind, the Ancient Guardians will eventually distribute this information as the Shakturi continue to rampage through the galaxy, but years of time will be lost waiting for that to happen which you could have used to build those Mega-Ships, so don’t delay!


Alternate Paths
If you choose not to fight against the Shatkuri, there are two other options.
First, you could join with the Shakturi and try to become part of the Shaktur Axis. If you do this, you will have a very powerful ally indeed, but realize that you will never be seen by the Shakturi as an equal. Within the Shaktur Axis alliance, they get the only deciding vote. If you join them, they’ll share the knowledge of the cure for the Psionic Virus with you and the Rift Striders will not focus their attention on you. They’ll also eventually share the knowledge of Mega-Ships with you so you can build your own to help them.
For the Shakturi Axis, the simple goal is conquest of the galaxy. You just need to get your victory score high enough by having the most population, worlds and the largest economy in order to win.
Second, you may decide that your path is a neutral one. If you don’t join the Freedom Alliance or the Shaktur Axis, you will be looking to make sure neither of them win and they remain locked in a stalemate allowing your empire and other neutral empires to survive independently. In this case, the Ancient Guardians will eventually share the knowledge of Mega-Ships with you as well in order to fortify all non-Shakturi aligned factions, though you’ll get them later than the Freedom Alliance would get access to them unless you can find and open the Vault of the Shakturi Mind without help from the Ancient Guardians.
Your goal is to survive long enough while preventing both the Shaktur Axis and the Freedom Alliance winning before enough years have passed. Good luck, this can be quite tough to achieve!


I hope you enjoy your experiences with the Shakturi Crisis, whatever way you choose to play it.
Please stay tuned for more information in early 2025 about our plans for the next Distant Worlds 2 release!

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Welcome back explorers,
the Maintenance Update, the latest major update for Distant Worlds 2, is out now and ready for you to discover.

This major update is mainly focused on fixing issues that have been reported since the release of the Return of the Shakturi expansion, but also includes many other improvements, especially in the areas of Diplomacy, Fleet and Ship Behavior, UI and AI automation.

This update also improves modding support for those using Harmony modding for localization and should make easier localization for languages with larger and special character sets much easier.

But that's not all. For those of you who want to know every detail of the Maintenance update, a detailed changelog is available at this link



In case you didn't have the chance to watch Erik's stream on Distant Worlds 2 and its future, you can take a look at it here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The Galaxy lives on

BUY NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/

Hello everyone.
Don't miss today's livestream at 15:00 CET, where an intrestisting preview of the upcoming Maintenance Update, set to release on December 5th. Tune in to learn more. 

This is the first of two Developer Blogs we’ll be doing as we get close to releasing the first official update after the release of Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi. We’ve seen feedback after the release that you are all enjoying the new Shakturi endgame crisis. As most Distant Worlds players know, the Shakturi are an ancient and terrible threat which was responsible for the last cataclysmic galactic war, the scars and remains of which are visible throughout the current galaxy.
A few of you have already managed to defeat the Shakturi, many others are still trying and some have found them to be too much of a challenge. The goal of these blogs will be to pull back the curtain a bit on the Shakturi crisis and help you figure out how to defeat these terrifying arch-enemies.
If you don’t want any spoilers regarding the story, you should stop here. If you’d rather try for one of the other two endings, either joining the Shakturi and helping them win or staying out of both the Shakturi Axis and the Freedom Alliance, we’ll mention those only briefly. Our focus will be on how to stop the Shakturi conquering the galaxy.



Shakturi Appearance Timing
We’ll start with the most straightforward advice. If you are finding the Shakturi to be too challenging, the first step is to adjust their entry time. The Shakturi entry is primarily based on the tech progress of the galaxy as well as the player’s tech progress. In either case, if you or the galaxy have advanced far enough, the Shakturi crisis will begin. For each step you delay their entry, you’ll gain more time to prepare for them. Keep mind that there is also a good amount of time (many years) between the beginning of the crisis and the full Shaktur Axis vs. Freedom Alliance war.



Rifts Destabilize
When the rifts first destabilize, you are given the opportunity to research the first two Psychic techs – Paranormal Studies and Psychic Energy Detection. Completing these before the story advances further can buy you on average 5 more years to prepare for the arrival of the Shakturi as you slow down their attempt to fully open the rifts. I recommend you always research these two when they become available.



Rift Striders Emerge
The first things to actually come out of the rifts are the Rift Striders. There is a massive initial wave, then a smaller amount over time until the rifts fully open and the Shakturi emerge. Once the Shakturi emerge, no further Rift Striders will come through the rifts. Fighting and destroying the Rift Striders will give you two new resources required to begin progressing the Genetic Research and Biowarfare tech trees immediately but be careful about fighting them at the rift unless your fleets are very strong as they initially arrive in large numbers.



Researching these initial Genetic Engineering and Biowarfare technologies will give you some information about what you’re dealing with and also a head start on the later techs you will need to get an edge, but the main priority with the Rift Striders is to destroy as many as you can. The Rift Striders act as eyes for the Shakturi who are still trapped in Riftspace. All locations the Rift Striders visit, the Shakturi will have knowledge of once they emerge. If you can keep the Rift Striders relatively contained, it will slow down the Shakturi when they seek the beacons (more on that below).



At this time, the other space creatures, under Shakturi influence, will also start to focus on attacking non-Shakturi systems and stations. Interstellar Biology Studies will lead you to the necessary techs to reverse this Shakturi influence and return the creatures to their normal migration and attack patterns, which will make them less of a nuisance.
Loosening the Shakturi control over the Rift Striders will take multiple projects, but as the Shakturi can manufacture these once they are established, it may be worth your while if you are finding them a nuisance. Even one level of counter-influence can lead to some of the Rift Striders resisting Shakturi influence and attacking the Shakturi themselves.



Shakturi Psionic Virus
The Rift Striders also spread the Shakturi Psionic Virus in all systems they visit with inhabited worlds. There is initially no cure for the Shakturi Psionic Virus and it can greatly disrupt the happiness of worlds as well as cause casualties. Moreover, the Shakturi Psionic Virus, if active on a world, makes it more susceptible to Shakturi psychic abilities.
The best way to prepare your empire for this is to research enough general Medical and Happiness technologies to mitigate the effects. If you get those early Xenobiological Studies and Xenobiological Investigations techs research before the Shakturi arrive, then you will only need Biowarfare and Plague Curing to get access to the cure for the basic Shakturi Psionic Virus which will greatly decrease its overall effectiveness. Note that the Shakturi can also research more advanced versions of the Psionic Virus, but you can also research new cures to match the new variants.



Shakturi Emerge
Once the Shakturi emerge from the Rifts, they will head to their buried Beacon worlds at the rim of the galaxy. Usually there are 2-4 of these and once they find them, they will start repairing them and eventually open new wormholes to their home galaxy to bring in reinforcements. The Shakturi at this point are strong, but not as strong as they will become and if you can manage to destroy their beacons you will be able to achieve an early victory before they become a larger threat.
The beacons themselves are almost immune to bombardment. You can try to destroy them with spies (very low chance) or invade and conquer the beacon worlds, which triggers an event chain allowing you to figure out how to destroy them from the surface. Finally, if you’ve actually managed to repair and control the one ancient planet destroyer that’s available in the pre-crisis galaxy, you could also use that to destroy the beacon planets.



Shakturi Archives
Assuming the Shakturi repair and activate the beacons, there will be a brief opportunity to get access to the Shakturi Archives. When the beacons activate there will be an echo of sorts back to them from three nearby locations. If you can explore these before the Shakturi gain control of them, you can recover some additional knowledge which will be useful against the Shakturi. If you don’t move quickly, this opportunity will be lost as the Archives are also of interest to the Shakturi.



Shakturi Supremacy
Once the beacons are repaired and the wormholes form, a few more years will pass until the first Shakturi vanguard fleet arrives with massive worldships and more warships. At this point, the Shakturi will establish themselves as a full empire and start using psychically-enhanced diplomacy and intelligence missions to sway other empires to their side, which will lead to the formation of the Shaktur Axis.
This is a good time to make sure you’ve researched Psychic Defense Fields, Psychic Resistance Training and Mind Shields to reduce the effects of the Shakturi Psychic capabilities against you in both space and ground combat and diplomacy and espionage. It’s especially important to have those Psychic Shields on all your combat ships and some resistance to psychic attacks for your ground troops.



Note that the more Shakturi there are in the galaxy, the more psychic energy they will have to spend on these abilities. That means keeping the Shakturi population under control is helpful in and of itself.
Keep working on diplomacy with the other empires and trying to get what successes you can against the Shakturi designs. It will help with the next stage.



Shaktur Axis and Freedom Alliance
At some point, the Shakturi will form the Shaktur Axis. They always approach the Boskara first and there’s an opportunity for you to disrupt that, but at a great cost. Even if you invest in this, it will only delay the inevitable. Eventually the Shaktur Axis will form, with the strongest factions the Shakturi were able to influence to their side. If you were successful in thwarting the Shakturi diplomatic and intelligence efforts, you may be fortunate to get a weaker Shaktur Axis (though they can add more empires later as well).
The Freedom Alliance will form a bit later in response. If you want to make sure you are part of it, try to maintain close relationships with as many of the less warlike empires as possible, especially any Humans, Ackdarians and Zenox who tend to be the alliance organizers. Then be sure to respond affirmatively to the story events that give you the opportunity to be part of its formation.
The more positive relationships you have, the better the chance you’ll form a strong Freedom Alliance. As with the Shaktur Axis, you can continue to work to bring more empires onboard after the initial formation.



The Final War
Shortly after this, the final war against the Shakturi will start, which involves a switch in victory conditions. Note that for the Freedom Alliance, you now have two main goals. The first is to preserve your own worlds, population and economy to keep a high baseline contribution to your victory. The second is to pursue as many War Missions as possible to generate additional contributions to your victory score so that you can get to 100%.
The most rewarding War Missions to convince the Shakturi they cannot win and must leave the galaxy are as follows:

1. Destroy a Shakturi Beacon: +15%
   
2. Destroy or Capture a Shakturi Planet Destroyer: +10%
   
3. Capture a Shakturi character: +5%
   
4. Research a key counter-tech against the Shakturi: +5%
   

You’ll need to balance defense and offense to accomplish these before the Shakturi weaken your alliance enough to make the goal impossible.



In the next blog, we’ll discuss the Ancient Guardians and their special Vaults, Planet Destroyers, Genetic Engineering, the Xaraktor Virus and the option of joining the Shakturi or remaining non-aligned.

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On December 5th we will release a major update that is mainly focused on fixing issues that have been reported since the release of the Return of the Shakturi expansion, but also includes many other improvements, especially in the areas of Diplomacy, Fleet and Ship Behavior, UI and AI automation.
This update also improves modding support for those using Harmony modding for localization and should make easier localization for languages with larger and special character sets much easier.

Key highlights:

• Many fixes, tweaks and improvements to the Shakturi Crisis
  
• Many UI improvements, especially to help manage facilities, outposts, ruins and migration
  
• Overhaul of Diplomacy trade valuations as well as improvements to AI management of Ambassadors
  
• Significant improvements to fleet and ship behavior, especiall involving dangerous locations, defense fleets and starfighters
  
• Empire background tasks now better prioritized especially for lower performance systems or the largest galaxies
  
• Tourism income and logic rebalance
  
• Improved localization support for localization mods for languages with larger and special character sets (the Chinese mod was used as a case study for this)
  
• An issue that could prevent all sound and visual effects playing has been fixed, which makes battles look and sound better than they have in a while
  
• Various data tweaks and fixes
  

BUY NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/

The ongoing and continuous support for Distant Worlds 2 reflects the passion and commitment of Slitherine and CodeForce to support the fans who believed in this galactic project from day one.

On October 24th, Slitherine and CodeForce launched Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi, marking the debut of the first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2. This release has been met with an overwhelmingly positive reception, reflecting the community's enthusiasm and excitement. On day one it had 100% of positive reviews, within a week, reviews have remained consistently high, up to 88%, and the ratings for the base game have risen to 76%.

Since the base game was released, performance and compatibility have improved thanks to numerous multi-threading optimizations, and both Artificial Intelligence and User Interface have progressed significantly. Slitherine released two Faction DLCs introducing the Ikkuro, Dhayut, Gizureans and Quameno. Also, the Return of the Shakturi expansion brings an Endgame Crisis storyline with a very dangerous new enemy along with Outposts, multi-empire Alliances and several new research areas.

In addition to the content from the three DLCs released so far, if a player who purchased Distant Worlds 2 on day one in March 2022 were to reinstall the game today, they would discover numerous new features and updates. We asked our developers at CodeForce to summarize them below:

• Much better economic, sustainability, and terraforming balance and scaling through the mid- and late-game.
  
• Greatly expanded and enhanced Hive mid-game threat, as well as improved Pirates in the early game.
  
• New repeatable, top-tier research projects to extend gameplay.
  
• Massively improved performance and compatibility.
  
• Major improvements to AI - including more detailed AI policies and improved automation and behavior for most areas of the game, especially fleets, ships, economic management, colonization, research, ship design, population management and diplomacy.
  
• Major User Interface improvements, ranging from new camera modes, map overlays and message centers (with far more message filters) to distance measurement tools, additional list multi-select capabilities, more hotkeys, a greatly improved Enemy Targets list, better text formatting for all messages, additional filters on various empire tabs, more tooltips guidance and better UI scaling.
  
• Expanded modding, including Steam Workshop support and an in-game Mod Manager, greatly improved mod loading and priority/conflict management.
  
• Improved per-Hull Ship Design with new Component Policies for ship design automation guidance, defined upgrade paths for each Ship Design and improved Fleet Templates to include per hull fleet definitions and more fleet management options.
  
• Much better Economic, Suitability and Terraforming balance and scaling through the mid and late games, including many improvements to resource logistics and private sector operations.
  
• Two faction refreshes for base game factions (Humans and Mortalen) to bring their gameplay up to the level of the DLC factions, with more on the way until all base game factions are updated (Zenox and Boskara are next)!
  
• Greatly expanded and improved Hive mid-game threat as well as improving Pirates in the early game, including adding a Pirate Cruiser!
  
• New Repeatable top tier Research Projects for continuing gameplay alongside other improvements, adjustments and rebalances to most of the research tree.
  

As noted by the prestigious Softpedia, the strength of Distant Worlds 2 lies in the ability to forge a vast intergalactic empire, giving the player the freedom to choose what aspects of their empire to control: “The game remains impressive when it comes to how much it simulates and how good it is at surfacing information while giving players ways to only deal with mechanics they care about”.

We’re thrilled by the warm reception of the expansion from fans, with thousands of visits to the Steam page and content creators from across the gaming world. Here are a few multilingual examples of how some of the top Twitch and YouTube creators in the strategy games niche have enjoyed Distant Worlds 2 and the new DLC.

Koinsky (series of 11 episodes) “Arachnid playthrough on HARD with the Return of the Shakturi DLC” (in French)

Canal do Void (series of 10 episodes) “Unintelligent and xenophobic insects” (In Portuguese)

Banlish “Oooh a good week starts!“

Cringer “Slitherine kind of day. More NEW DW2 DLC”

Nils “We conquer the galaxy in Distant Worlds 2 with the new add-on” (in German)

DasTactic “Distant Worlds 2 - Now it’s the time”

Tokshen “Time for more Distant Worlds 2 - playing as the Space Spiders!”