Hello everyone and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2!

One of the points of feedback we heard from the base game release was that even though the factions had more to differentiate themselves from each other than in the original Distant Worlds, players wanted more differentiation in the gameplay between factions.

Since the release of the base game, we’ve created and released two DLCs, adding a total of four new factions to the game (the Ikkuro, Dhayut, Quameno and Gizurean), each with their own unique gameplay, story, ships, techs and capabilities. The development for these DLCs also added new features to the game to allow for more faction differentiation and to date, these faction DLCs have been well received.

We announced after the release of the Ikkuro and Dhayut DLC that we would also begin an effort to refresh the gameplay for all of the base game factions to make them more unique and bring them up to the level of the DLC factions. The upcoming “Game Faction Update” marks the beginning of updating the base game factions.

This update includes a refresh of the Human and Mortalen factions as well as all the base Government types. There are many other changes, including improved border graphics and a new visualization for Fleet Engagement ranges. Future updates will gradually cover the remaining base game factions until all are refreshed. Next up are the Zenox and Boskara and after that, the Teekan and Haakonish.

I will summarize the faction and government changes below, but for the full information, please read through the in-game faction and government descriptions carefully once the update is officially released. There are also new event illustrations and loading screens to go along with these changes.

The Humans

The Humans are understandably the most played faction and we also have looked at them as an entry point to the game for most, so we wanted them to be able to support a variety of playstyles.
They are now slightly better at living on Continental worlds and have a new conditional event which grants a new free Colonization tech advance when you colonize a new Continental world (you can receive this bonus once per planet).

For those focused on Trade or Tourism, we changed their Great Art Exposition from a faction event on a timer to a better conditional event which triggers whenever you sign a Free Trade Agreement or build a new Resort Base. It grants you a Trade and Tourism income throughout your empire along with a boost to Colony income and Tourism for the colony where the Great Art Exposition is held, but you can’t trigger it more than once every 5 years.

When war is declared on your Human empire, you now may choose either a new Admiral or new General with two positive traits when the “Hero of the Hour” event triggers, reflecting the Human ability to compete in the military sphere.

Internal divisions among Humans are reflected through “Internal Debates”, which reduces happiness throughout your empire, but also grants you a capable new Ambassador when you sign a new Defense treaty.

When a foreign intelligence mission against you succeeds (but is detected) you may now choose to spend a Spy to gain a +20% boost to Counter Espionage along with a small decrease to Colony Happiness throughout your empire for the next 2 years, helping Humans with a more Espionage-driven playstyle.

Humans now have Carriers which are larger than those of other factions, allowing them to either fit more starfighters or just be more well-rounded fighting ships.

We also added new Leader, Ambassador, Scientist, Spy character traits and expanded all the Human unique tech trees to make them more useful and accessible earlier in the research tree.

Humans also now have a new unique facility, the Foundation for Galactic Cooperation, which boosts Diplomacy, Espionage, PsyOps, Concealment and Trade.

Finally, we went through and reviewed and fixed any issues with the Human race-specific victory conditions.

The Mortalen

The Mortalen are disciplined, reliable, loyal but very militaristic. They can be your best friend if you invest in getting along with them or your worst enemy if you cross them. We wanted to use the new faction tech we had available to build on their militaristic way of dealing with the galaxy and give our more warlike players a fun experience.

Mortalen troops now gain experience and revcover faster than before and the Mortalen are also better at Armor Research, about which more below.

The previous timed faction events “Warrior Wave” and “Patriotic Wave” are now conditional events. Warrior Wave now triggers when you declare war and lets you choose between a boost to Population Growth and Troop Recruitment or a boost to Troop Attack Strength for 2 years. Patriotic Wave now triggers when war is declared on you and gives you a choice of Population Growth and either Corruption Reduction or War Weariness Reduction.

Any of these choices will help you in wartime, but it will be your choice how best to respond.
When you invade and conquer an enemy world you will now trigger “Know Your Enemy” as the Mortalen tacticians study their foes, allowing you to choose a 2 year boost to either Espionage and Counter Espionage or Targeting and Countermeasures.

Periodically you will also be asked to choose between two characters, always picked from your Leader, Admirals and Generals. Whoever you choose will undergo a trial of arms, with a good chance to succeed and gain a positive trait and a smaller chance to fail and gain a negative trait. This will also help develop the most experienced Admirals and Generals, which are relevant for your victory conditions, if these trials go well for you.

All Mortalen ship and spaceport hulls now have +1 Reactive Armor rating, making their ships harder to destroy, especially in the early game. The Mortalen also receive a new unique Armor tech called Block Armor, which has its own sub-tree and has a higher Reactive rating than standard armor.

There are also new unique Leader, Admiral, General, Ambassador character traits and the other Mortalen unique techs were expanded as with the Human ones.

Finally, we went through and reviewed and fixed any issues with the Mortalen race-specific victory conditions.

The Governments

We revisited every base game Government type and added some unique gameplay to each of them. One of the most changed, which I’ll review here, is Feudalism. Feudalism is a relatively unstable type of government in that leadership changes at the top tend to be very disruptive, but it now gains several very interesting features to compensate for those periodic disruptions and rebellions.

In a Feudal Empire, your Private Economy can now build individual Feudal Escorts for its own Escort, Guard and Patrol missions. You will see these marked with a Star in your ship list and it will state that they are not state-controlled. You will not be able to give them orders, but they will help keep your space safer from lower level threats such as pirates and creatures, without costing you any State income or maintenance.

Feudalism also gets upgraded Planetary Militia which fights like Infantry without upgrades. This is a big strength increase which makes Feudal worlds significantly harder to conquer.
Finally, Feudal Obligations will double your Troop Recruitment Rate 2 years after War declaration and your Troops gain experience 25% faster.

I hope this article gives you a good preview of what’s coming in the Game Faction update and that these free improvements will increase your enjoyment of Distant Worlds 2. Thanks again for your support!

Dear Explorers,

Another free update, "the Game Faction Update," is scheduled for release on April 9th for all Distant World 2 players.

It marks the beginning of updating the base game factions to match the gameplay standards of the new factions introduced in post-release DLCs.

This update will include a refresh of the Human and Mortalen factions as well as many other changes, including improved border graphics and a new visualization for Fleet Engagement ranges. Future updates will cover the remaining base game factions until all are refreshed.

It will include additional Fleet Engagement ranges and a new map overlay for engagement range visualization to help you plan your fleet home bases, engagement ranges and targets.

This update, along with many other news and events, will be included in the free Game Faction Update, launching on April 9th.
That’s not all!

There will be a special streaming event with Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, on March 26th at 13:00 PM GMT on our Twitch channel where he will pre-show the Game Faction update.

Be sure to tune in and join us for this special event.

The Galaxy lives on

Hello everyone and thank you for your interest in Distant Worlds 2!

One of the principles of Distant Worlds 2 from the start has been to add more “guided automation” to find a better middle ground for players between full manual play and fully automated play. Ship Design and Research are two of the key areas where we heard a great deal of feedback from players who wanted more guided automation.

In Ship Design, players have the option to fully automate this area, design all of their ships manually, or mix things up by assigning some ship roles to manual design and keeping others automated. The fully automated and mix and match players wanted more influence over how those automated designs looked and we agreed that this would be a good thing.

In order to fully achieve this goal, we also needed a way to better guide research (when it is automated) because the ships and bases that you can design depend in large part on the research you have done in terms of what components are available to you. It made sense to connect the two systems in order to achieve the desired end result.

We added an entirely new section to the Empire Polices to accomplish this goal and you can see a screenshot of that section above.

There are tooltips in the game to help explain the choices, but I will summarize how the system works here. For close-in weapons and stand-off weapons, you can choose a weapon category to prefer for research prioritization and ship design.

The automation will then focus your weapon research in those weapon categories and use those weapons in its automated designs. When a faction has a faction-unique component within these categories, it will be further preferred and weighted for research and design.

For example, you can see in the Mortalen ship below, that it has Blasters and Torpedoes as the preferences state, but in the choice of which Torpedo to use, the automation has researched and included the Mortalen-unique Pulse Torpedo.

There are other categories where the player can also choose the priority of a particular weapon type, which ship role should be the smallest to try to fit those weapon types in its designs and even state that he does not want that type of weapon used at all to free up space for other priorities.

For example, see the screenshot below of the choices for Ion Weapons. These three options give you maximum flexibility – if you don’t want Ion weapons on your ships at all, or you do want them but only on your Battleships, or you want lots of Ion weapons on all of your ships, you can achieve that through these automation policies. The same flexibility now applies to Intercept Weapons (Point Defense and Fighter weapons), Area Weapons and Bombard weapons.

Near the bottom of this new policy section are a few sections that are not about weapons. The first deals with Fighters and as with the above lets you pick how much you would like to prioritize Fighter Bays on your designs and which should be the smallest ship role with Starfighters.

The rest give you some choices on Reactors, Shields, Hyperdrives and Engines. In each of these component areas, the research tree offers you different paths. For example, you can see below the choices for Hyperdrives – you can choose to focus on Energy Efficiency, Jump Initiation Time or Speed. In the game, these are represented by the Kaldos, Calista-Dal and Equinox hyperdrive branches. Once you’ve picked one of these preferences, it will guide your automated research and design to focus on those components without manual involvement.

We plan to build on this system further in the future, adding additional preferences for Fighter designs and Civilian ship and base designs, as well as other requests the community may have.

We hope this feature review helps you understand how to use these new policies and that they make your time in Distant Worlds 2 more enjoyable!

Dear explorers,

We are pleased to announce that the Stellar update for Distant Worlds 2 is now available, bringing significant improvements to gameplay and overall game quality, enriching your interstellar journey through the galaxy.

This completely free update is to address stability issues, significantly reducing crashes and launch problems that players may have encountered previously. With these fixes in place, we aim to ensure a smoother and more seamless gameplay experience for all explorers

Enhanced Guided Ship Design
Embark on your voyages with newfound confidence as the Stellar update expands the policy system, offering enhanced guidance for automated research and ship design priorities. With a new Weapon and Component Focuses section added to Empire Policy settings, players can exert greater control over automated decisions, aligning research and ship designs more closely with their strategic objectives.

Refined User Interface
Discover a universe of possibilities with the addition of a new measurement tool, providing intuitive ways to gauge distances and plan your next move with precision. The user interface enhancements included in this update aim to streamline navigation and improve overall accessibility, ensuring that every aspect of your cosmic odyssey is within reach.

Charting a Clear Path
Navigate the cosmos with confidence as the Stellar update resolves commonly reported pathfinding issues, smoothing the way for seamless exploration and conquest. Whether charting courses through nebulous clouds or plotting trajectories across star-studded skies, your journeys will be guided by newfound clarity and efficiency.

AI Enhancements and Beyond
Experience a more dynamic and responsive galaxy with improvements to AI behavior, construction, diplomacy, colonization, and more. From the intricacies of interstellar politics to the challenges of managing burgeoning colonies, the Stellar update enriches every facet of gameplay, ensuring that each decision shapes the destiny of your empire.

Beyond the Stars
But the wonders of the Stellar update don't end there. For those eager to delve into the nitty-gritty details of the changes, a detailed changelog is available here[www.matrixgames.com], detailing everything from major enhancements to minor bug fixes.

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

Download the Stellar update now and embark on your most ambitious adventure yet

Welcome back explorers,

The day has come. The Fleet update, the latest major update for Distant Worlds 2, is out now and ready for you to discover.

The new Fleet major update 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. With these new additions and improvements, players will be able to experience Distant Worlds 2 like never before.

But that's not all. For those of you who want to know every detail of the Fleet update, a detailed changelog is available here[ftp-us.matrixgames.com]. This document outlines all the changes made in the update, from major new features to minor bug fixes.

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:

During the stream, Erik Rutins, producer and co-designer of Distant Worlds 2, previewed the Fleet update and the future of the game.

So don't waste any more time. Get ready to experience the latest version of Distant Worlds 2 and discover a new Galaxy.



The galaxy lives on

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

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/

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[www.twitch.tv].

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/

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.

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:

The Galaxy lives on


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

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[/] is the highly anticipated real-time strategy game pinning the United States against Russia in a fictional conflict set in the contemporary era. At WASD you will get the chance to play the latest version of the game in an exciting single player mission.

Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance

Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance is a gritty RTS that puts you in the middle of the Future Wars between humanity and Legion's synthetic intelligent machine network.

You'll have the chance to play through a few missions from the early stages of the single-player campaign at WASD.

📅 WASD X IGN 2023
Date: 14th - 16th September 2023
Location: Truman Brewery London