DW2 FAQ/QnA megathread - Ask your question here!

[alexman91]

how do i move ships in nebulas and storms? m ship is jus keep getting disabled and is stuck.
what do i do about greu and green bubbles?
how do i get it out?

[zgrssd]

how do i move ships in nebulas and storms? m ship is jus keep getting disabled and is stuck.
what do i do about greu and green bubbles?
how do i get it out?

Purple and Green Nebulas do Ion damage.
Unfortunately if you get Ioned hard enough, your ships looses it's mission (I think when your Sensors get Ioned). This is most likely a bug.

What you need is Ion Defense (not Ion Component Defense). The primary sources are. You only need like 10.
- Ion Defense in the Ion Weapon Line
- Ion Sheath armor, under T3 Armor
- advanced shields and amor also carry some Ion Defense

As for the current situation: My advise is to set the ship on automatic.
That way it will regularly get teh new order to leave. And with a bit of luck, something other the the sensors is stunned.
That or just write it off by scrapping it in place. Propably the better option.

[compactset]

I have salvaged a scientist and a fleet commander from a destroyed pirate base. After that I ordered the fleet which took them to retrofit at the spaceport of my capitol. I wanted to move the scientist to a research station since I have plenty without personnel but I do not know how to do this. If I go to the scientist tab of the science menu that particular scientist is not listed so I cannot give the order to move him. If I examine the spaceport I can hover his icon but if I click with the mouse no command appears. The same holds for the fleet commander: not listed in the commander menu and I don't know how to issue the order from the spaceport.

[BTAxis]

At the moment, characters you pick up from pirate bases can't be used in any way. I assume that's going to change in the future.

However, if you collect scientists from destroyed science stations owned by other empires, you will be able to capture and recruit them.

[zgrssd]

I have salvaged a scientist and a fleet commander from a destroyed pirate base. After that I ordered the fleet which took them to retrofit at the spaceport of my capitol. I wanted to move the scientist to a research station since I have plenty without personnel but I do not know how to do this. If I go to the scientist tab of the science menu that particular scientist is not listed so I cannot give the order to move him. If I examine the spaceport I can hover his icon but if I click with the mouse no command appears. The same holds for the fleet commander: not listed in the commander menu and I don't know how to issue the order from the spaceport.

Check under the prisioners tab if you can hire them, release them or the like.

However, currently that only works with very few leaders.

[bartrat]

I am interested in the game, my setup is fine EXCEPT for the video card:
according to Speccy 64 freeware my video card is:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 620
Manufacturer NVIDIA
Model GeForce GT 620
GPU GF119
Subvendor ASUStek Computer Inc (1043)
Current Performance Level Level 1
Current GPU Clock 270 MHz
Current Memory Clock 405 MHz
Current Shader Clock 405 MHz
Release Date Apr 2012
DirectX Support 11.0
Bus Interface PCI Express x16
Driver version 23.21.13.9135
BIOS Version 75.19.55.00.19
Shaders 48 unified
Memory Type DDR3
Physical Memory 2047 MB
Virtual Memory 2048 MB
Bus Width 64 bit
It is below the min video card recommended, would it run at all or must I buy a new video card [hopefully not].
I would be willing to run the program at a lower speed or with less graphics.
It is it possible with my current setup or a very bad idea?

[zederfflinger]

In my current game, I was able to peacefully colonize an independent Zenox colony. However, the game says that the

planet's pop is maxed at 492 million, even though it's a fairly large planet, and about 50% quality.

The colony screen says that the max pop should be 7.6 billion. Is this a bug, or am I just missing something?

[Grotius]

A couple questions:s

1. On the galaxy map, what do the yellow and red concentric rings around my explorer ships mean? Is one fuel range? The other...sensor range? Which is the larger one?

2. Like others, I've had an explorer ship become disabled in a nebula. I know I'll have to research ion shields of some sort to prevent this in the future. In the meantime, can I do anything about it? Disband the ship? Also, I have all my ships on manual at the moment. How do I path them around nebulae? Will the AI do that for me even if I'm on manual, or do I have to send the ships to intermediate waypoints manually?

3. How do I find the pirate bases in my home system? (Or anywhere else?)

Many thanks for a great game.

[Menzoberranzan]

A couple questions:s

1. On the galaxy map, what do the yellow and red concentric rings around my explorer ships mean? Is one fuel range? The other...sensor range? Which is the larger one?

2. Like others, I've had an explorer ship become disabled in a nebula. I know I'll have to research ion shields of some sort to prevent this in the future. In the meantime, can I do anything about it? Disband the ship? Also, I have all my ships on manual at the moment. How do I path them around nebulae? Will the AI do that for me even if I'm on manual, or do I have to send the ships to intermediate waypoints manually?

3. How do I find the pirate bases in my home system? (Or anywhere else?)

Many thanks for a great game.

1. The circles represent jump range (generally the smaller) and fuel range (generally the larger).

2. On manual, you must do everything yourself. You will have to use "waypoints" to path around a nebula, but without the ability to queue orders for ships, you will need to babysit each ship you have on manual and give it a new order once the current order is finished.

3. a) Look for the red lightning bolt symbol (indicating some form of hostile entity). Zoom in until you can determine the threat present.
b) Send a ship that can be sacrificed (in case it can not escape) to an unexplored location. For Pirate star ports, these seem to located in asteroid fields most often.

[StormingKiwi]

2. Like others, I've had an explorer ship become disabled in a nebula. I know I'll have to research ion shields of some sort to prevent this in the future. In the meantime, can I do anything about it? Disband the ship? Also, I have all my ships on manual at the moment. How do I path them around nebulae? Will the AI do that for me even if I'm on manual, or do I have to send the ships to intermediate waypoints manually?

Many thanks for a great game.

Yes the AI uses pathfinding to plot the best route to a location on the other side of a nebula for you, with intermediate waypoints. You don't have to do that, contrary to the other poster.

[baldamundo]

Is there any advantage to stacking multiple copies of the same sensor equipment? The largest ship I've unlocked has 12 sensor slots, but as far as I can see there are only 9 different types of sensors, and none of the statistics seem to increase if you put a duplicate set of sensors on. So are those extra sensors slots pointless?

And do fleet countermeasures or area shield recharge stack? Or is there no point in having more than one per fleet?

And is trace jamming per ship or per fleet?

[compactset]

Check under the prisioners tab if you can hire them, release them or the like.

However, currently that only works with very few leaders.

Just checked also the prisoner tab and they are not there. Is this a design choice or a bug? Seems strange having the characters on board of my ships and spaceports but not being able to see them in any tab.

[Artophwar]

What does the Suppress Pop-ups option actually suppress? It is very vague right now with its description.

[BTAxis]

Just checked also the prisoner tab and they are not there. Is this a design choice or a bug? Seems strange having the characters on board of my ships and spaceports but not being able to see them in any tab.

I'd call it an unfinished feature. As I mentioned it does work with characters that belong to normal empires, it's only the pirate characters that don't show up in the prisoners tab. I'm assuming that's not by design.

[zgrssd]

In my current game, I was able to peacefully colonize an independent Zenox colony. However, the game says that the

planet's pop is maxed at 492 million, even though it's a fairly large planet, and about 50% quality.

The colony screen says that the max pop should be 7.6 billion. Is this a bug, or am I just missing something?

Each population has a different maximum, based on how well the species can live on the planet. So this species has a maximum of 492M, but the best species should have one of 7600M.

A couple questions:s

1. On the galaxy map, what do the yellow and red concentric rings around my explorer ships mean? Is one fuel range? The other...sensor range? Which is the larger one?

2. Like others, I've had an explorer ship become disabled in a nebula. I know I'll have to research ion shields of some sort to prevent this in the future. In the meantime, can I do anything about it? Disband the ship? Also, I have all my ships on manual at the moment. How do I path them around nebulae? Will the AI do that for me even if I'm on manual, or do I have to send the ships to intermediate waypoints manually?

3. How do I find the pirate bases in my home system? (Or anywhere else?)

Many thanks for a great game.

1. Each hyperdrive has a maximum distance it can do in a single jump. That is the 2nd line.
2. Set the explorer to automatic or disband it. The game has a bug where strong enough ion damage makes them loose the mission, and the only way out is have automatic re-queue the order.
The game automatically paths around nebula, unless it is directly orderd into one (but I had pathing graze one).
3. Should be under Military, the last tab.

Is there any advantage to stacking multiple copies of the same sensor equipment? The largest ship I've unlocked has 12 sensor slots, but as far as I can see there are only 9 different types of sensors, and none of the statistics seem to increase if you put a duplicate set of sensors on. So are those extra sensors slots pointless?

And do fleet countermeasures or area shield recharge stack? Or is there no point in having more than one per fleet?

And is trace jamming per ship or per fleet?

The 4 sensor types I am aware off are:
Short Range
Long Range
Targetting
Coutnermeasures.
+2 Fleet variants of Targetting and Countermeasures.

The biggest human ships I can see have 4 Standart, 2 Large.
6/2 on the spaceport.
So that model might have a bug.

Check under the prisioners tab if you can hire them, release them or the like.

However, currently that only works with very few leaders.

Just checked also the prisoner tab and they are not there. Is this a design choice or a bug? Seems strange having the characters on board of my ships and spaceports but not being able to see them in any tab.

Asume a bug or "not yet implemented".
My guess is the mechanic breaks if the owners empire is pirates or no longer exists.

[Pocus]

How do you disband in space? I have the same issue, an explorer in a gravitic storm.

[rxnnxs]

What does the Suppress Pop-ups option actually suppress? It is very vague right now with its description.

I already made a description to change the description for it and was going to post it, but then i figured out what it really does:
there are pop ups that can not be ignored. if you click besides them their border blinks yellow and a disturbing sound plays.

THAT ARE the blocking pop up windows that can be disabled.

all other pop ups do not have anything to do with this setting.

[zgrssd]

What does the Suppress Pop-ups option actually suppress? It is very vague right now with its description.

I already made a description to change the description for it and was going to post it, but then i figured out what it really does:
there are pop ups that can not be ignored. if you click besides them their border blinks yellow and a disturbing sound plays.

THAT ARE the blocking pop up windows that can be disabled.

all other pop ups do not have anything to do with this setting.

Just to be sure:
Those popus are disabeled.
They do not just start being non-blocking instead?

[rxnnxs]

What does the Suppress Pop-ups option actually suppress? It is very vague right now with its description.

I already made a description to change the description for it and was going to post it, but then i figured out what it really does:
there are pop ups that can not be ignored. if you click besides them their border blinks yellow and a disturbing sound plays.

THAT ARE the blocking pop up windows that can be disabled.

all other pop ups do not have anything to do with this setting.

Just to be sure:
Those popus are disabeled.
They do not just start being non-blocking instead?

My fault, I have no idea what with blocking windows is meant.
Some Popups expect a decision and stay on and do not fade away, but when pressing escape, are closed anyway.

There are windows that still behave blocking. Victory conditions Progress (V) for instance. Click aside it, and it makes hell of a noise. You have to close it. It behaves always like this.
I never seen a popoup that blocks that way.
So I have no clue. Sorry, my fault.

[lurtze1]

What is the recommended amount of ai empires per amount of stars?