Distant Worlds 2 News

[h3]DISTANT WORLDS 2: RETURN OF THE SHAKTURI IS OUT NOW[/h3]
Welcome back explorers,
an ancient evil is returned to the vast universe of Distant Worlds 2. The wait is over.
The Return of the Shakturi, the third DLC and first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2, is now available.

The Shakturi, a sinister alien faction, nearly destroyed the galaxy in a past cataclysm. Originating from another galaxy, they possess abilities beyond normal understanding. Their return poses a dire threat, challenging even the strongest late-game empires.

It is now your choice whether to ally with them or fight them.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Key Features:

• Genetic Engineering in the game introduces a brand-new space creature and allows the Shakturi to manufacture these creatures for scouting and combat. It also grants the Shakturi influence over existing space creatures in the galaxy, enabling them to use these creatures to further their own goals.
  
• Biowarfare enables the Shakturi to deploy plagues that weaken other factions, making them more susceptible to Psychic influence and control.
  
• Psychic Abilities enhance the Shakturi's effectiveness in space and ground combat, diplomacy, espionage, and research. Countering these abilities requires innovative strategies that could potentially turn the Shakturi's strengths into weaknesses.
  
• Planet Destroyers and Mega Ships are powerful tools available to all factions, including those introduced post-release. These formidable assets are crucial in battles against the Shakturi, with Mega Ships offering unique functionalities, such as the Quameno Mobile Robotic Troop Foundry.
  
• New Space Creature – The Rift Strider introduces fresh challenges and opportunities within the game.
  
• Outposts allow factions to establish a presence on worlds unsuitable for full colonization, securing valuable territory for future expansion.
  
• The Multi-Empire Alliance System introduces new ways to coordinate and cooperate with allies, enhancing strategic collaboration across empires.
  
• New Space-based start with just a single colony ship and a small fleet.
  
• Ancient Guardian Vaults and Special Artifacts add depth to exploration and gameplay.
  

[h3]“STRATEGY” UPDATE[/h3]
But that’s not all. Together with the DLC, we are releasing a new official update, free for all. The Strategy Update includes months of improvements made to support the Return of the Shakturi feature expansion, with a specific focus on refining player and AI management of mid to late game conflicts. We will continue to update, fix, and improve the base game to give the best possible gaming experience.
For those of you who want to know every detail of the Strategy Update, a detailed changelog is available at this link.

Also, don't miss today's showcase on Twitch with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, following the release of The Return of the Shakturi.


The Galaxy lives on
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/

[h3]Ongoing Evolution[/h3]

War Management, War Missions, and Economic Balance
Hello everyone. This is the third of three Developer Blogs we’re doing in the lead up to the release of Return of the Shakturi, the first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2. In the first one, we focused on the Shakturi story and their unique abilities as well as the Mega Ships and Planet Destroyers. In the second, we covered Outposts, multi-Empire Alliances and the Refugee start option, which are unique new features exclusive to Return of the Shakturi.
This final blog covers several additional features and improvements which will be released as part of a free update for all Distant Worlds 2 owners, along with the Return of the Shakturi release. You can already see a preview of these by opting into the Beta branch on Steam and GOG right now and trying the latest public beta update (though be aware, public betas are not always as stable as official releases).
With Return of the Shakturi, you now get to experience what a proper endgame crisis in Distant Worlds 2 is like and what fighting against (or with) a major endgame threat like the Shakturi means for your empire.
First, let’s discuss the new tools you will have in the upcoming official update to make war management easier, especially in the late game.


The first of the major features is a greatly expanded Enemy Targets list. As you may know, this list allows the player to review all kinds of possible targets, from mining and research stations to colonies and fleets. In the past, you could queue a target or not queue it and the automation tried to take care of the rest using any available automated fleets. In addition, for performance reasons only the closer and more important targets were available through the list – the rest had to be manually attacked. Moreover, automated fleets had other competing priorities which could sometimes delay the execution of queued player targets. These were all clear limitations, but it was the best we could do at the time.
Now, we have expanded this to include every applicable attack mission type for each type of target and improved the AI to be able to fully handle each of these and intelligently coordinate automated fleets to do so. Also, during a War, you will now always see ALL targets for any empires with which you are at war. For example, for a colony world, you could choose “Clear Defenses”, “Bombard”, “Invade”, “Raid” or “Blockade”. Each of these will be enabled if a suitable fleet is available for the mission and if queued, will be the top priority for available automated fleets to execute.


For example, if you queue an Invasion, you may find that an available automated attack fleet joins in to Clear Defenses or Bombard to make sure the invasion fleet has an easier task. You can also queue these supporting orders yourself and the assigned fleets will do their best to coordinate their attack.
Similarly, you may “Attack”, “Capture”, “Raid” or “Blockade” a station instead of just attacking it. Every available target is also highlighted on the galaxy map and when you hover over a target, it pings the location for you.
Being able to queue specific missions for targets through your Enemy Targets list is a real help when it comes to managing your fleets during wartime. It’s also important to emphasize that the AI can also perform all these missions and will use them against you in a coordinated fashion. A strong AI empire is now a much more challenging opponent than they were in earlier updates. Also, in terms of friendly AI empires, when you have a queued target, if your allies have available fleets in range, they may now join in to assist you provided they are also part of the same war.
As a final point, if a target is associated with a War Mission (more on those below) it will have a special symbol to highlight it in your list.


War missions are an entirely new system which includes special unique story-related missions as part of the Shakturi DLC, but also includes more generic missions which are now a part of all wars with or without the Shakturi. War missions represent your advisors informing you of a key target or opportunity which may help with the outcome of the war.
Completing a war mission within the allotted time can help your War Score, provide boosts to Empire Happiness or reduce War Weariness as well as other rewards and can increase enemy War Weariness. As the AI looks at the War Score and War Weariness in determining when a war is won or lost and on what terms, completing War Missions can help bring a war to a successful conclusion more quickly or allow you to hang on a bit longer in a war you are otherwise losing.
There is a new policy setting which allows you to turn off War Missions for your empire, and receive them as suggestions that may be declined (the default setting – if you decline a mission, your advisors will offer another mission option every six months or so) or automatically accept any offered war missions.
In the example below, your advisors have located the enemy Science Academy and are recommending that it be destroyed. The planet with that facility has a special indicator on the enemy targets list and we’ve queued missions to Clear Defenses and Bombard the planet the hope that we will be able to destroy the facility. Our empire’s bombardment policy has been set to eliminate enemy troops and facilities to make sure the job gets done.

Perhaps you would prefer not to risk multiple fleets to bombard a well defended planet and incur the reputation cost of bombarding a populated world as well? We have two new intelligence missions coming as well and one of them allows you to Destroy a Facility. In the example below, while this is a risky mission, it gives us a chance of success at a much lower cost if it succeeds. You can also now try to Capture enemy characters or encourage them to Defect to your side.

Finally, we’ve also done a major rebalance of economies, planetary suitability and the colonization and terraforming research trees and facilities. We’ve rebalanced these areas with the goal of improving economic scaling through the mid-game and late-games, to avoid situations where there is so much income that it effectively removed economic choices. We also wanted to address the issue of some factions having far more available suitable planets than others. The result overall should be fewer initially suitable planets for colonization, a better balance between factions, and terraforming facilities which are less expensive but may require ongoing maintenance on lower quality worlds.
The one remaining piece is an overhauled message and notification system to help reduce message spam and improve player awareness, especially during wartime. That will be revealed on release day – be sure to tune in for the Return of the Shakturi livestream and release on October 24th, 2024!

COMING SOON:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/

[h2]Expanding Horizons[/h2]

Refugees, Outposts and Alliances
Hello everyone. This is the second of three Developer Blogs we’ll be doing in the lead up to the release of Return of the Shakturi, the first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2. In the first one, we focused on the Shakturi story and their unique abilities as well as the Mega Ships and Planet Destroyers. In this one, we’ll focus on some of the additional unique new features which are part of the Return of the Shakturi expansion, specifically Outposts, multi-Empire Alliances and the Refugee start option.
The third and final blog will cover some additional features and improvements that are coming as part of the work on Return of the Shakturi, but which will be released as part of a free update for all Distant Worlds 2 owners, along with the Return of the Shakturi release.
With Return of the Shakturi, you now get to experience what a proper endgame crisis in Distant Worlds 2 is like and what fighting against (or with) a major endgame threat like the Shakturi means for your empire.


Outposts are smaller than colonies with a maximum of 50 million of your empire’s citizens. in exchange for this, they can be built on planets where you would not normally be able to put a colony, in other words very challenging and hostile environments. Outposts will not grow, though if they lose population for whatever reason, they can accept new migrants up to their maximum population. Outposts also don’t provide income – instead, they require funds from your empire to maintain the various life support systems that allow for survival on such harsh worlds. The support cost of an Outpost increases as its planet’s suitability decreases.

What are they good for then?

• Outposts allow you to claim territory in a way that stations do not. Where you have an outposts, your empire’s borders will extend to cover it.
  
• Outposts allow you to extend your colonization range to get to more suitable worlds that might otherwise be out of reach.
  
• Outpost give your empire full benefits from any empire bonuses or unique resources found on their planet, which can give access to previously inaccessible ruin bonuses.
  
• Outposts allow you to build Terraforming Facilities. This means that with Outposts, you can potentially bring a previously uncolonizable planet up to colony level. Note however that worlds with very low base suitability now require a Terraforming Facility to remain on the planet in order to maintain the suitability improvements, but sometimes you just need some extra real estate.
  
• Outposts can be converted to colonies if their suitability is high enough, for a modest cost.
  

Return of the Shakturi includes a new multi-empire Alliance system. During the Shakturi endgame crisis and story, this allows for the formation of the Shaktur Axis and the Freedom Alliance during that crisis to fight against each other in a war to the finish. However, if you choose to turn off the Shakturi crisis, you’ll still get access to the Alliance system (in fact, much earlier as it won’t be gated behind the story events).


Alliances allow you to form a closer union with other empires. Once Allied, you are guaranteed a certain baseline set of treaties and all wars become Alliance wars. If someone attacks you, your Allies will join in your defense, but you can also Convene the Alliance to vote on declaring a combined war on another empire or to end an existing war. While your empire is in an Alliance, there is no separate peace possible.

When you Convene your Alliance, you can also vote to Admit or Expel a member. Note that the most powerful Alliance members will have more votes, but Admittance requires unanimity. Joining or leaving an Alliance is a big choice, but surviving the galaxy without an Alliance can be a challenge as well!

Now let’s discuss the Refugee Start.

Many have asked for a space-based beginning to a civilization, with a single colony ship and a small fleet with which to find a new home. This “Refugee Fleet” start option will now be possible for those players who want a greater challenge. You will have a choice of fleet size and starting tech level and once you found a new homeworld, you will be able to switch to a regular government type for your faction.


When this start begins, you are fleeing a recent disaster which struck your homeworld and you are in a fairly dangerous part of the galaxy. The population on your colony ship and passenger ships are all that remains of your people. You will need to protect them at all costs against the many dangers on the way while trying to find a new home. If you explore well enough, you may find more than just a new home!


Note that this start is best for experienced players who don’t mind difficult challenges or relying on manual play to get around problems.

In the next blog, we’ll talk about the many new features and improvements coming to the next official free update, thanks to the work on Return of the Shakturi. Those includes better fleet attack coordination, an upgraded Enemy Targets list with multiple fleet mission types per target, improved AI use of all fleet mission types, a new wartime mission system (with unique Shakturi missions when playing through the Return of the Shakturi), new intelligence missions (Destroy Facility, Deploy Plague (Shakturi only), Capture Character), rebalanced colonization and economy systems and improved message and notification management.

Wish list now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/

[h2]The Rise of the Shakturi[/h2]


Hello everyone. This is the first of three Developer Blogs we’ll be doing in the lead up to the release of Return of the Shakturi, the first feature expansion for Distant Worlds 2. This initial blog will focus on the Shakturi crisis, Planet Destroyers, and Mega Ships. Please note that you will have a choice of whether you want to play with the Shakturi crisis or not and the ability to adjust when the crisis begins to suit your challenge level.
The second and third blogs will go into detail on additional features and improvements that this expansion brings to the base game, including those that will be available as part of a free update for all Distant Worlds 2 players and those that are available even if you are not playing through the actual Shakturi 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. The story to date through the base game and the faction DLCs has given various clues about the Shakturi. You’ve seen places of gravitic instability and ancient closed wormholes, bits and pieces of old communication logs detailing a massive conflict, mind-affecting viruses, and some remaining “vaults” set up by artificial intelligences called the Ancient Guardians to preserve knowledge from that previous era. Along with all that, for those who searched well enough, there was even a single ancient but non-functioning Mortalen planet destroyer.
With Return of the Shakturi, you now get to experience what a proper endgame crisis in Distant Worlds 2 is like and what fighting against (or with) a major endgame threat like the Shakturi means for your empire.

The crisis begins with a gradual build-up, which can be seen in the livestream preview we did, but once the Shakturi arrive, it becomes evident fairly quickly that they have some knowledge and abilities that are beyond other empires. The Shakturi have mastered certain areas of research that appear for the first time in this expansion – namely Psychic, Genetic Engineering and Biowarfare. We’ll go through each of these in detail below.
Their powerful Psychic abilities allow the Shakturi to enhance their diplomacy, espionage, counter-espionage, space and ground combat. They can take over characters and even in the worst case take over the leader of an empire, at a minimum causing chaos but for some empires like Hive Minds, potentially even vassalizing that empire. In space combat, the Shakturi can incapacitate the crews of your ships, or even cause them to hallucinate and fire on their own allies. In ground combat, your divisions can be disabled or even caused to temporarily defect to the Shakturi side.

All of these are limited by the psychic energy generated by the Shakturi in the galaxy. In other words, the more Shakturi there are, the more frequent and more powerful their capabilities will be. You will need to start from the beginning, understanding what psychic energy is, how to disrupt it and how to defend against it in all of those areas. There is a large defensive Psychic research tree for you to unlock to help level the field against the Shakturi.
The Shakturi have also long been focused on “perfecting” their own forms and abilities and experiment relentlessly with Genetic Engineering to create better servants for themselves. You can follow their lead and research ways to improve your own species, to make your empire, ships and ground troops more powerful. The Shakturi are also busy creating and manufacturing new space creatures to unleash against you as well as influencing those that already exist to become hostile against all that are not in the Shaktur Axis. If you want to be able to better counter the Shakturi influence over these creatures, this is where you should focus your research.

Biowarfare gives the Shakturi the ability to design and unleash plagues of various kinds to weaken and prepare other factions for conquest, including making them more susceptible to Psychic influence and control. This area of research will allow you to cure those plagues, saving many millions of your empire’s population and making them a harder target for the Shakturi. You may also be able to design and deploy some plagues of your own, specifically targeted against the Shakturi. Take care though as Biowarfare often leads to unintended consequences.
The Shakturi endgame crisis progresses through various stages, culminating with a massive Alliance vs. Alliance war between the Shaktur Axis and the Freedom Alliance for control of the galaxy. Depending on your choices, you may end up helping the Freedom Alliance, the Shakturi Axis or trying to stay neutral (or fighting against both!). Good luck!

To make that final war more epic, Return of the Shakturi also comes packed with Planet Destroyers and Mega Ships. Each faction in the game, including those added post-release (with the exception of the Ikkuro, they’ll get something special post-release), will now have access to a special Mega Ship. Most of them act as Planet Destroyers and since the Shakturi will bring their own Planet Destroyers, it’s good to have an equivalent counter if you need it. Some are different though and I’ll review those below. These mega ships will also now be available separate from that endgame crisis in normal gameplay, as long as you have the Return of the Shakturi expansion.

Humans: Planet Destroyer with a Super Mass Driver weapon

Ackdarians: Planet Destroyer with a Super Beam weapon

Mortalen: Planet Destroyer with a Super Mass Driver weapon

Haakonish: Mega Ship with a Massive Gravitic Pulse weapon

Teekan: Mega Ship with a Massive Ion Bomb weapon

Boskara: Planet Destroyer with a Super Firestorm Torpedo weapon

Zenox: Stealthy Mega Ship with Super Long Range Sensors (a mobile Stealth Mega Monitoring Station which can fight)

Dhayut: Planet Destroyer with a Super Beam weapon

Quameno: Mega Ship with a Mobile Robotic Troop Foundry

Gizurean: Planet Destroyer with a Super Beam weapon

In the next blog, we’ll talk more about Outposts, the new multi-Empire Alliances and the space-based start option for your civilization, which are additional new features included in this expansion.

Wish list now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2926560/Distant_Worlds_2_Return_of_the_Shakturi/

Welcome Back, explorers.

We're thrilled to announce that Distant Worlds 2: Return of the Shakturi, the first feature expansion for the acclaimed 4X space strategy game Distant Worlds 2, will be launched on the 24th of October. Prepare yourself for an epic new chapter in the Distant Worlds saga, as an ancient and sinister force reawakens to threaten the very fabric of the galaxy.

In this expansion, the galaxy faces the terrifying return of the Shakturi, a powerful alien faction whose last invasion nearly obliterated all life.
[h3]Key Features:[/h3]

• Genetic Engineering in the game introduces a brand-new space creature and allows the Shakturi to manufacture these creatures for scouting and combat. It also grants the Shakturi influence over existing space creatures in the galaxy, enabling them to use these creatures to further their own goals.
  
• Biowarfare enables the Shakturi to deploy plagues that weaken other factions, making them more susceptible to Psychic influence and control.
  
• Psychic Abilities enhance the Shakturi's effectiveness in space and ground combat, diplomacy, espionage, and research. Countering these abilities requires innovative strategies that could potentially turn the Shakturi's strengths into weaknesses.
  
• Planet Destroyers and Mega Ships are powerful tools available to all factions, including those introduced post-release. These formidable assets are crucial in battles against the Shakturi, with Mega Ships offering unique functionalities, such as the Quameno Mobile Robotic Troop Foundry.
  
• New Space Creature – The Rift Strider introduces fresh challenges and opportunities within the game.
  
• Outposts allow factions to establish a presence on worlds unsuitable for full colonization, securing valuable territory for future expansion.
  
• The Multi-Empire Alliance System introduces new ways to coordinate and cooperate with allies, enhancing strategic collaboration across empires.
  
• New Space-based start with just a single colony ship and a small fleet.
  
• Ancient Guardian Vaults and Special Artifacts add depth to exploration and gameplay.
  

On August 26th Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, gave a sneak peak of the new DLC Return of the Shakturi. In case you missed the stream, you can watch it here:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

To celebrate the announcement of Return of the Shakuri, starting at 18.00 GMT, Distant Worlds 2 will take part to the Space Exploration Fest.
Check all the details here.

Prepare for a galaxy-shattering crisis unlike any other. The Shakturi are back, and only the bravest and most cunning of explorers will be able to stop their return. Will you be ready?

The Galaxy lives on

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