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Distant Worlds 2 - Fleet Update Development Blog #1

Hi everyone,

Since the release of Distant Worlds 2, we have been working diligently both to resolve reported issues with the game as well as make consistent improvements and feature additions through a series of free updates. The most recent was the “Discovery” update in early September, which came along with the Gizurean and Quameno DLC. Since then, we’ve been working on a new official update for you all, which we are calling the “Fleet” update. We have also been working on our next major expansion, the Return of the Shakturi, which will for the first time add a proper end game crisis to Distant Worlds 2 in 2024.

The “Fleet” update will release on November 13th and will be our last expected official update for 2023. It includes many improvements across all areas of the game, but focuses most on the area of improving fleet and ship behavior in almost every way. We’ve heard the feedback that there were still frustrations with how fleets and ships responded to certain circumstances, especially where manual orders and automation interact.



It also brings along a bunch of crash fixes, performance improvements and UI improvements, but I will focus this article mainly on the fleet and ship improvements. We had made many improvements to fleet and ship behavior over time, but it became clear that we needed a deeper dive in this area to make sure we were able to fully resolve the remaining reported issues. This turned out to be a major endeavour which took two months of development time as we went through every fleet or ship behavior-related issue in our backlog. The result is that fleets that behave much better for all manual/automated playstyle choices and also for the AI empires.

While investigating Fleet Movement, we resolved a number of issues which could cause movement orders to not be completed in a timely fashion, cause problems with ship collisions and fleet formations, or result in excessive short range jumps or jumps inside planetary bodies.

When looking at Fleet Engagement issues, we resolved bugs that could cause fleets to sometimes attack targets beyond their engagement range, or cause them to not break off attacks before moving well beyond their engagement range. Ships now are also better at considering all their weapons when deciding on their optimal attack range. We also resolved issues where fleets that were preparing or regrouping would sometimes wait too long before progressing their attack mission, even if combat was already underway and fleets are more intelligent about deciding how many of their ships they really need to take on a specific target.

There were various cases where Capture missions could fail. We improved the logic around this and made the assault strength of fleets and ships more visible, to make it obvious when a fleet or ship was able to take on a Capture mission.



Many issue reports involved cases where fleets were not choosing strategic targets as well as they should or not being as responsive to player queued targets as we would like. This general area took up much of our time. We addressed these issues from various angles and fleets are now much more responsive to player queued targets as well as more intelligent when automated in choosing their own targets. Fleets will now pay more attention to refueling to extend their attack range and not get unnecessarily distracted with other lower priority targets. There were also some cases where fleet targets in hyperspace could cause odd behavior – those have been resolved.

We also found an instance where ships that were in fleets were not using the full tactical logic to evaluate when they could take on targets individually, which could lead to some unfortunate kamikaze-style attacks – also now resolved. We also found an issue that could incorrectly trigger the fleet retreat logic, causing fleets to become much more indecisive and reassign targets too often in certain situations. That issue could affect both the tactical and strategic levels and has been fixed.

Another complaint was the situation where an enemy fleet was incoming to a friendly system, but an automated defense fleet might choose to take on another target of opportunity and leave the system. That will no longer happen if the defense fleet knows an enemy fleet is on the way to their location.



Invasion fleets and invasions also got an overhaul, to improve their ability to coordinate with attack fleets instead of embarking on invasions on their own and to make sure they were more responsive to invasion needs rather than focusing too much on loading and unloading troops within the empire.

Automated fleet formation and organization had some remaining issues which could cause fleets to not correctly match their fleet templates or cause fleets to become more strung out over time. There were various causes for this, all of which have been resolved. These fixes help keep fleets together better and keep unwanted ships out of fleets.

Fleet and ship refueling, including fuel tankers, has always been a complex area. We’ve made more improvements to fuel tanker behavior especially, to make sure that retrofits won’t cause refueling issues, that fuel tankers will coordinate with each other when choosing which is best positioned to refuel a fleet and that they will better avoid dangerous locations when keeping up with and refueling the fleets they are attached to. Fuel tankers will no longer seek to refuel ships that are currently on an attack mission, to better avoid danger, but they will refuel them before and after that mission.



Some non-military ships were still being careless about certain dangerous locations, especially those with ancient hostile bases. They are now much more aware of the threat and will avoid it. Colonization ships also had some remaining interactions that could cause less than optimal choices and those are now resolved both for manual and queued semi-automated colonization.

Finishing up the fleet and ship improvements, we found that in certain cases the empire logic would not update its knowledge quickly enough after a new world or mining stations was captured, leading the invading/attacking fleets and ships to have a long trip back to another location to refuel when they should have refueled on the spot. By forcing an update of the empire logic when such events happen, we should no longer see that issue.



I’ll also note that in related UI improvements, we now allow ship multi-select for all civilian ships as well and when you re managing your manual designs or troops, manually upgrading a design will now automatically disable Auto-Upgrading for that ship hull and manually setting troop garrisons will now automatically disable auto-garrison for the colony. We also fixed the click-through issue which could sometimes unintentionally assign an order to a selected ship or fleet when right clicking on the navigation panel in the Research screen.

We finally found and fixed the rare issue that could cause a stack of waiting messages to suddenly expire and be wiped from existence and we fixed the message spam that could happen when you destroy a pirate faction.



A few last important improvements include that automated troop recruitment now focuses on recruiting one troop at a time on a given world, completing recruitment of any existing troop before queuing a new one, thus minimizing sudden economic swings. We also fixed an issue that could cause only the most recent repeatable tech improvement to apply for certain techs and added the ability to abandon a colony. We also improved the AI for some population policies, mainly Resettle, which helps reduce the burden on the player and improves the play of the AI.

Finally, we have made a number of improvements to the base game data and events as well as including some fixes for the two DLCs we’ve released to date. Please note that the data and event fixes will only be available when starting a new game.



We hope the Fleet update will greatly improve your enjoyment of Distant Worlds 2! We are proceeding with work on the Shakturi expansion as well as another official update for Q1 2024, which will include our first two updated base game factions (the Humans and the Mortalen, with the Boskara and Zenox following soon thereafter).

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1531540/Distant_Worlds_2/

Distant Worlds 2 - Fleet Update out on November 13th

Welcome back explorers,

Some great news has just arrived in the Galaxy: today, November 7th at 16.00 GMT, on our channel there will be a special streaming event with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2. Get a reminder here.

During the stream, Erik will be previewing the upcoming Fleet update, releasing on the November 13th, which includes many improvements across all areas of the game, but focuses most on the area of improving fleet and ship behavior in almost every way. 

This is an amazing opportunity to get an exclusive preview of the new update for Distant Worlds 2, straight from the source. You won't want to miss it!

The streaming event will be taking place on November 7th at 16.00 GMT, so be sure to tune in and join us for this special event. 

See you there. 

The Galaxy lives on 



https://store.steampowered.com/app/1531540/Distant_Worlds_2/

Distant Worlds 2: Factions - Quameno & Gizureans out now

Welcome back explorers,

The wait is over. Quameno & Gizureans, the two new playable factions for Distant Worlds 2, have invaded the Galaxy.

Two alien species, two factions, two societies follow very different paths.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The puzzle-loving Quameno focus on research, with their whole society aimed at unlocking the knowledge and mysteries of the universe. Trivial matters, such as trade, espionage, or even diplomacy, are only seen as distractions from their goal of research and intellectual prowess.

The Gizureans are vast both in numbers and in their hunger to consume the galaxy’s resources to keep their ever-expanding population happy. With a mysterious past, hinting at a once-whole hive mind from which only a limited shared consciousness remains, this aggressive faction engineers their ships with many fighters and special partially organic hex armor.

Each of these new factions also comes with their own special storyline and unique story locations, adding to the possible exploration events and to your knowledge of galactic lore. The Quameno will give you some additional insights on the Ancient galaxy and some of the mysteries the Ancient Guardians left behind, while the history of the Gizureans is connected with that of the Hive threat as well as the ancient enemy known as the Shakturi!

In case you have missed Erik’s streams on the two new factions of Distant Worlds 2 and the recent Discovery Update, don’t worry. You can rewatch both streams here:

[previewyoutube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Rqs1xcomA[/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9JGlAeLsBA[/previewyoutube]

The Galaxy lives on


https://store.steampowered.com/app/2409480/Distant_Worlds_2_Factions__Quameno_and_Gizureans/

Broken Arrow and Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance will be at WASD x IGN

Will you be anywhere around London between September 14th to 16th? Then you might want to mark this on your calendar.

Slitherine is coming to WASD, bringing two of its most anticipated real-time strategy games: Broken Arrow and Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance. You will have the chance to experience the games first hand, meet our staff and offer your valuable feedback.

Broken Arrow


Distant Worlds 2 - Update 1.1.6.7

We're releasing a new update for Distant Worlds 2. As per usual, please let us know what you think of the list of changes. Your feedback is essential to keep improving the game.

Changes in 1.1.6.7 (August 29th, 2023):

[h3]PERFORMANCE[/h3]
  • Important fix for a major memory usage and stability issue; this fix should reduce memory usage significantly as well as increasing stability

[h3]SHIP BEHAVIOR[/h3]
  • Fixed military ships sometimes still attempting to refuel at dangerous locations
  • Fighters are now more active in attacking target of parent carrier, even when not at war with target empire
  • Point defense weapons now more responsive to intercept incoming weapons fire
  • Automated exploration ships will now explore/survey asteroids with hidden resources when there are no other missions to perform (more thorough exploration of entire system without getting waylaid by often inconsequential asteroid resources)
  • Individual ships in a fleet with Prepare and Attack missions will now auto-commence attack against targets at waypoint even when the rest of the fleet have not yet arrived. This covers an edge-case where the target ends up being at the waypoint (which is usually a different location). In those cases the ships that had already arrived sometimes did not engage the target, because they were waiting for the rest of the fleet.

So now they will engage the target if it happens to be at the fleet waypoint. No need to wait for the entire fleet in that case, because they are already at the target and likely under attack from it.

[h3]FUEL TANKERS[/h3]
  • Ensure fuel tankers always completely deplete fuel cargo when refueling nearby fleet before obtaining more fuel

[h3]CONSTRUCTION[/h3]
  • Ensure Construction Yards list properly updates ships incoming for repair or retrofit
  • When cannot afford to build new base, can no longer right-click on locations to assign build missions to construction ships
  • Now allow retrofitting bases when at colonies of other factions (e.g. independent colonies)
  • Ensure spaceport construction always follows colony population limit set in empire policy (do not build before reach required population level)

[h3]SHIP DESIGN[/h3]
  • Ensured Ion Bomb (Teekan) and Ion Pulse weapons have component families assigned for preferred weapon policy purposes

[h3]COLONIZATION AND MIGRATION[/h3]
  • Fixed colony ships sometimes loading wrong population when some colony population policies are using Resettle policy
  • Fixed bug where colonies that somehow got zero-population could break various things (e.g. Kasim)

[h3]PIRATES[/h3]
  • Pirates now unlikely to cancel a protection agreement when relation trend is positive, thus less likely to get protection canceled soon after being accepted

[h3]RESEARCH[/h3]
  • Improved AI research prioritization in various areas (weapons, planetary defense facilities, colonization, ship hulls, etc) to avoid queueing excessively long research projects
  • Fixed excessively high priority for Administrative Facility research projects

[h3]PLANETARY FACILITIES[/h3]
  • No longer build Terraforming Facilities at colonies that are already at 100% quality

[h3]DATA[/h3]
  • Minor updates to various data file values for artifacts, game events, planetary facilities and troops to fix a variety of reported issues
  • Ensure Mortakosh battleship stays at starting location instead of roaming the galaxy


The Galaxy lives on