1.2.0.5 Public Beta Update Available

[MaximKI]

Hi everyone,

Please try this new beta and let us know if it helps your game. We encourage you to start a new game as there may be changes that only take effect upon starting a new game.

To facilitate frequent beta iterations as needed, this beta is only available for now on Steam and GOG. All Matrix customers also have a free Steam key available (through your My Page) which can be activated if desired to install DW2 via Steam and test this Beta there.

On Steam, you can switch to it by going to Distant Worlds 2 in your Steam Library, right-clicking on it, choosing Properties -> Betas -> then choosing the latest beta branch from the drop-down list and allowing Steam to update your game. If it updates correctly, you should see the latest beta version listed as your version in-game on the bottom right.

On GOG, you can switch to it by going to Distant Worlds 2 in your GOG Library, selecting Distant Worlds 2, then clicking on the button next to "Play" that looks like two horizontal lines with small offset circles, choosing Manage Installation -> Configure then picking the latest Beta from the Beta channels drop-down list and allowing GOG to update.

As of the official 1.0.6.4 update, the Core game engine has been upgraded to use the latest version of Stride. (4.1.0.1 and a newer version of .NET. As of the recent 1.1.0.9 Aurora Update, we now include .NET 7 in the game executable, so no additional external .NET redistributables are required.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you still experience crashes with 1.0.6.4 or later, especially crashes in battle, please try the new DXVK rendering option in the game settings. This can be found under "Rendering Mode", which can be switched from DirectX 11 to DXVK. DXVK is only guaranteed to work with the SDR (Standard Definition Rendering) option in your game settings. It may work with some HDR (High Definition Rendering) settings, but we do not advise trying those at this time. The DXVK option willl likely resolve many issues caused by driver bugs or incompatibilities.

If you try this setting and the game does not launch, please note the command line option in the changes below to switch back to DirectX 11. (To force DirectX on launch, add --use-dx11 as a command-line argument to DistantWorlds2.exe)

Changes in 1.2.0.5 (January 30th, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed rare crash when changing Steam overlay size during user interface rescaling

FLEETS AND FLEET BEHAVIOR
- rebalanced automated fleet creation, now allow more fleets overall and more defense fleets
- tweaked how automated fleet home bases and attack points are selected so that empire has better offensive and defensive posture
- improved fleet topup so that distant ships are better at travelling to fleet location and then joining the fleet

SHIP BEHAVIOR
- ships with low accuracy hyperdrives (e.g. Skip Drive) now more willing to perform short-range jumps to destinations within same location

SHIP DESIGN
- tweaked weapon component selection for research and design so that racial preferred weapon components and policy preferred weapon families work together better instead of conflicting, thus selecting the best weapon components for each category
- ensure designs that are changed in the Ship Designer also immediately refresh the cached design data for all ships that use the design
- improved automated ship design generation when specified ship hull has limited general bays, avoiding filling with unnecessary components when still missing reactors or other critical components. This is especially relevant with fighter hulls which may have very low general bay counts

SHIP CONSTRUCTION
- improved order of automated military ship purchases so that try to evenly build ships for each role instead of focusing on largest roles first

RESEARCH
- fixed research project resolution to always properly retrieve by Id, not position, e.g. for event descriptions
- reduced cost of diplomacy research projects

COLONIZATION
- automated colony ships loaded with a population that has no suitable colonization targets (e.g. abandoned colony ships with unusual races) will now unload unsuitable race to allow loading another race with viable colonization targets

COLONY CONQUEST AND TECH ADVANCES
- prevent tech breakthroughs from conquered colonies when previous colony conquest was very recent, i.e. no conquest tech unless conquest unhappiness from previous invasion has completely expired. This also applies to Gizurean Scouring event.
- research project selection for colony conquest techs and tradeable techs now excludes projects that are not EnabledByDefault (unless specific to race), thus properly excluding story-related techs that should never have been part of these rewards
- colony conquest no longer provides only partial progress to research projects. Will now always provide complete tech breakthroughs when it provides a reward

WAR SCORE
- rebalanced values of bases so that war score is more realistic. Specifically: greatly reduced defensive base values, reduced spaceport values, increased research station and resort base values
- fixed bug where troop destruction was being overcounted for war score

PIRATES
- reduced starting tech level of Airless Wanderers pirate faction, which had accidentally been set too high

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- updated Hint text for hotkeys to properly indicate using Ctrl-# instead of Shift-#

QUAMENO AND GIZUREAN DLC
- when triggered, the Quameno event 'A Piece of the Puzzle' now also adds a +10% population growth rate bonus to your empire for one year (in addition to the existing tech breakthrough)
- fixed overlapping research projects in tech tree for "Study Degenerate Gizureans" and "Shakturi Design and Behaviour"

IKKURO AND DHAYUT DLC
- minor fixups for Damazy story text

Changes in 1.2.0.4 (January 25th, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when calculating population amount
- fixed crash when drawing location badge
- fixed crash when applying fleet tactical settings
- fixed crash when removing star system in game editor
- fixed crash when loading weapon billboard textures with faulty data
- fixed crash when resolving empire color from flag image with faulty texture file
- fixed crash when removing 'pinged' items from galaxy map
- fixed crash when obtaining research project definition
- fixed crash when determining scientists at research stations
- fixed crash when getting resources at planet
- fixed crash when ship reviews fleet escort position

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- clicking on item in message list view (at screen far right) now more often opens related screen, e.g. clicking on completed spy mission will open the spy detail screen, ready to assign a new mission

PATHFINDING
- improved jump pathfinding when start or end point of journey is in deep space (outside system): skip unnecessary systems at start or end of path to minimize number of jumps
- improved jump path finding so that less likely to have very long indirect paths to destination unless no other route. Now also more willing to plot path that passes through nebulae when required

SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed ships sometimes getting stuck picking up debris when many other nearby ships

CONSTRUCTION
- ships and fighters no longer take nebula damage (standard or ion) while under construction/repair or inside a hangar

CONQUEST
- colony conquest tech breakthroughs (both standard and via Gizurean Scouring event) now exclude research projects that are excluded for conquering race, i.e. will not get techs that are normally excluded for your race

DIPLOMACY
- peace offer messages now properly show any additional demands in main body of text (i.e. incentives to end war)

SHIP DESIGN AND RESEARCH FOCUSES
- fixed issues where ship hull damage level could sometimes be NaN when weapon focus levels were 'Do Not Use'
- fixed some factions not upgrading their ship designs with newer hyperdrives when Hyperdrive Focus is set to 'Efficiency'

GAME EDITOR
- game editor now allows removing debris and other small items at a location
- game editor now allows removing abandoned ships and bases

QUAMENO AND GIZUREAN DLC
- Scouring Gizurean event now selects research project from conquered empire, i.e. tech that they have, but you don't
- Waste Nothing Gizurean event no longer selects research projects that are currently queued

Changes in 1.2.0.2 (January 18th, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- Fixed crash with some game controllers
- Now properly extend path finding system time array when add new star system to galaxy (either via game editor or game event), thus resolving all of the IndexOutOfRange errors in various situations

RESEARCH AND SHIP DESIGN PREFERENCES
Continuing the work started last year to allow more guidance for automated Design and Research, we have now added a new Weapon and Component Focuses section to empire policy settings. If you are not handling Ship Design and Research manually, this will greatly help you in prioritizing the automation's choices.
- This new section consolidates pre-existing preferred weapon family settings with many new settings that allow fine-tuning how research and ship design work
- Note that the alternate preferred weapon family settings have been removed to streamline the user interface for this section (e.g. 'Preferred Close-In Weapon Family 2')
- Can now control the level of each weapon category and when they are used
- Also now allows tweaking focus for fighter bays, hyperdrives, reactors, shields and engines
- Note that each faction has their own unique policy settings in this area, further differentiating their ship designs and that race-specific technologies still carry additional weight in terms of the automation's choices

FLEET BEHAVIOR
- Fixed fleet topup button sometimes not working properly
- Fixed fleets sometimes incorrectly overriding engagement range to attack dangerous locations when they are in the same system as the fleet

COLONIES
- Fixed an issue affecting growth rate calculations. Colony populations now calculate growth rates per race, so that less suitable races for the colony grow slower

OTHER
- Fixed resource mining rates not being updated (error introduced in 1.2.0.0)
- Fixed instances where single ship was sometimes the only selectable item when zoomed into location view

Changes in 1.2.0.0 (January 11th, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when reviewing colony events for main view header
- fixed rare crash when performing research or making trade offer
- fixed crash when retrofitting ship
- fixed crash when determining research modifier with faulty mod data
- fixed crash when drawing ship damage report
- fixed crash when determining resource priorities
- fixed crash when determining fleets to attack target
- fixed crash when finding nearest neutral location
- fixed crash when could not access SessionLog file
- fixed crash when generating graphics node for missing planet
- fixed several fleet-related crashes
- fixed a possible crash on starting a new game
- fixed crash when attempting to find the nearest unthreatened location for an empire
- fixed crash when fleets check if they have an attack target
- missing ship summary will no longer crash victory condition checks on loading a saved game
- fixed a difficult to reproduce per-location weapon effects desync related crash

COMPATIBILITY AND LAUNCH ISSUES
- Further improved support for HDR by hopefully insuring that Windows’ AutoHDR is off and not interfering with DW2. If enabled, Auto-HDR could cause a crash on startup.
- if any 2D character animations fail to load, an entry will be written to the session log and a crash dump will be generated but the game will no longer crash

PERFORMANCE
The “Fleet” update had some performance regressions relative to the “Hyperspeed” update, partly because of the improved fleet and ship logic. This round of updates entirely resolves that performance regression and improves performance even further.
- major performance improvements for late-game and large galaxies (2000 stars)
- extensive performance and memory optimizations, especially in very large battle scenes with many ships and fighters
- reduced memory pressure in a number of ways, thus reducing .Net garbage collection pauses
- path finding (and path timing) performance improvements
- fixed an arbitrarily long delay on updates of explorer ships mission assignment because it doesn't need to grab a lock on pathing info anymore
- general performance improvements - locking is now cooperative
- reduced memory garbage generation when operating on shared and indexed lists in general
- reduced memory garbage generation when calculating stock levels
- visibility system related performance improvements
- rewrote lock-heavy 'nearby orb' check used by selection panel for in-system ships getting a background image
- late game performance improvements (time reduction, partitioning) to economy and ship pathing systems

FLEETS
We’ve continued improving Fleet and Ship behavior, based on feedback after the release of the “Fleet” update. We hope this round of updates will address all remaining issues. Please note that many reports we get on fleet and ship behavior are still because of player tactical and policy settings conflicting with their expectations– please check and understand those first to make sure your fleets and ships do what you would like.
- extended functionality of Fleet Topup action button so that will now build new ships of up/downgraded roles for missing ships (from fleet template) when cannot build ships of higher roles (no hull/design). But only when fleet template has 'Ship Role Up/Downgrade' enabled and the template items do not designate a specific design (i.e. any design for hull or role)
- fleets are now more careful to check whether first need refuelling before returning to home base
- improved fleets attempting to avoid risky attacks against stronger targets when other strong fleets already assigned to target
- improved fleet coordination with fuel tankers for refuelling in various edge cases
- fleets now better at maintaining cohesion when attack target jumps away and fleet ships attempt to track jump (fleet tracks jump as whole and all ships either succeed or fail with tracking). This avoids lone fleet ships attacking target while rest of fleet fails to jump
- fleets moving to non-specific destination (i.e. galactic coordinates instead of specific planet/base/etc) will now jump directly to destination when within jump range and not passing through nebula
- fixed fleets sometimes continuing attack mission against target after becomes part of their empire
- no longer disable retrofit fleet button when construction yard wait queue is too long (but include warning in button tooltip)

COLONY INVASIONS
- invasion support fleets (Attack, Raid) will now take on other targets when arrive at enemy colony but have no invasion capability and invasion has not yet begun (invasion fleet has not yet arrived), i.e. will not keep reassigning pointless mission against fleet Attack Point
- improved Invasion fleet willingness to invade other enemy colonies when not enough troops to prevail against main designated Attack Point
- fixed colony troops sometimes mistakenly ending up on invading side

SHIP BEHAVIOR
- fixed bugs in recent changes with jump pathing (e.g. Exploration Ships sometimes not assigning new missions)

SHIP DESIGN
- fixed some component types not being able to be added to design component bays

PIRATES
- slow down rate of pirate tech progress
- prevent pirate factions from salvaging tech from debris, which combined with the tech progress adjustment should fix the situation where pirates had started advancing in techs faster than empires

AI IMPROVEMENTS
- tweaked AI determination of when empire is in economic shortfall (cashflow and cash on hand) and thus reduces ships and troops (when these are automated), i.e. less aggressive at disbanding ships and troops when economy cannot support to avoid overreaction to brief economic downturns

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added a new distance measurement ruler tool, to activate hold shift and left click, release left click but hold shift and drag
- holding shift will also turn on distances in various hover info cards and mission descriptions
- added summary of game starting situation to right of Load Game file screen (click on a savegame in the list to see a preview summary of the game before loading)
- Select Ship Hull screen now includes fighters when filter is set to 'State Ships' (creating a new ship design)
- minimum and maximum effect rate sliders added to options menu (set both to 1.0 for always pretty effects)
- fixed missing ship and base symbols at location zoom level

MODDING SUPPORT
- now include any additional flags from mods in player flag selection dropdown in Start New Game screen
- added --skip-splash option to skip the splash screen to help power users and mod devs who find it annoying
- added --new-game and --continue command line options for power users and mod devs
- mods should be able to use suffixed GameText.txt (e.g. GameText_*.txt) files that append new entries without replacing the whole GameText.txt

IKKURO AND DHAYUT DLC
- Ikkuro “Secrets of Life” event adds additional population growth.
- some minor changes to Damazy and also to the defense based around Kasim

GIZUREAN AND QUAMENO DLC
- Quameno “Integration Studies” event scaling changed to make it a significant penalty under typical circumstances.
- Quameno “A Piece of the Puzzle” event now adds population growth for the Quameno
- Gizurean “Waste Nothing” event was fixed to no longer complete the current queued tech most of the time, but to function as intended, which means it will pick randomly from any more advanced techs on the retired/salvaged ship and only award tech boosts within those categories, not necessarily full techs. This will allow it to function as a good way to catch up tech-wise, but not as a way to race ahead.
- Gizurean “Scouring” event was fixed to function as intended, which means it will pick randomly from any more advanced techs on the conquered planet and only award new techs within those categories. If the planet’s previous owner had no more advanced techs, Conquest and Scouring will not award techs. This will allow planetary conquest and Scouring to function as a good way to catch up tech-wise, but not as a way to race ahead.
- Gizurean “Tribal Conflict” event has a more significant happiness penalty.

Changes in 1.1.8.7 (November 17th, 2023):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed a possible crash on starting a new game
- if any 2D character animations fail to load, an entry will be written to the session log and a crash dump will be generated but the game will no longer crash

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- late game performance improvements (time reduction, partitioning) to economy and ship pathing systems

COMPATIBILITY IMPROVEMENTS
- improved support for HDR by hopefully ensuring that Windows’ AutoHDR is off and not interfering with DW2.

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added a new distance measurement ruler tool, to activate hold shift and left click, release left click but hold shift and drag
- holding shift will also turn on distances in various hover info cards and mission descriptions

MODDING SUPPORT
- added --skip-splash option to skip the splash screen to help power users and mod devs who find it annoying
- added --new-game and --continue command line options for power users and mod devs
- mods should be able to use suffixed GameText.txt (e.g. GameText_*.txt) files that append new entries without replacing the whole GameText.txt

IKKURO AND DHAYUT DLC
- some minor changes to Damazy and also to the defense based around Kasim

[rxnnxs]

finally!
now with high dynamic range i have to adjust the gamma to about 2 but the graphics look good.
you can see at my screenshot below also that the gamma is now correct ingame, but a screenshot shows that "outside" the game, other programs "see" the graphical output as we are supposed it to see, but do not see (thats what is the big question WHY this is.. on high dynamic range only).

p.s.:
the ship icons are dislocated. it depends on the resolution if it works or not (my guess).

ship icons dislocated.jpg (15.42 KiB) Viewed 3167 times

besides that, you finetuned many things that are not even mentioned.
the view at the galaxy works much much better now.

[RikiGamez]

Hi,
I stumbled upon this thread by accident (I didn't even know there was a BETA), have there been any changes in Anti-aliasing to the current stable version of the game? It seems to me that the Beta is much smoother and looks very good.

And the most important thing - UI IMPROVEMENTS (measurement ruler tool), it is a big game changer to make this game the game it was supposed to be. What's going on: Unlike Stellaris and clones, there are no jumps here and you have to MAKE kilometres from point A to point B. AND ONLY at this point (yes, this beta), when we have a ruler in our hand, do we start planning the fleet's route , some navigation (like in a real sea fleet).

I was playing a game yesterday when an enemy fleet attacked one of my planets. I discovered it quite late, and (out of spite) I sent two of my fleets elsewhere. Now a decision was needed to return - but will I make it? Who is closer to this planet? Me or him? Because it looked similar to the eye. And maybe I will be able to combine my two weaker fleets before I meet the enemy.

Now I see CLEARLY - because earlier it was a guessing game, which spoiled everything in this game, whether he is 3M or maybe 4M or maybe 5M far away from me?. Now, as in real navigation, having the fleet's course, speed and ruler - we begin to have chess in which we can both think and predict, and not guess.

Developers- great job! Below are links regarding navigation in WW2. Now, together with navigation tools (the ruler) we got real FLEET in this game.
https://youtu.be/Di2bJhkw7p0?si=38iYxpaoMwlvo5xZ

[for developers] - what can be improved? It would be worth adding circles to indicate the SENSORS RANGE - even starting with Proximity Sensor Array. I press a button and I can see and predict where I will detect the enemy fleet first and where I will have a BLIND SPOT. In my case yesterday, I had a Blind Spot on one side and I saw another enemy fleet when it was too late...

[MaximKI]

Hello RikiGamez, the intent of the public beta builds is to give us a chance to test feature improvements, bug fixes, and other changes before going official with them in the future. After we've thoroughly tested the measurement tool and other performance improvements, we intend to include them in the next official update, barring any issues that would break the game of course.

[fruitgnome]

Next beta update please.

[MaximKI]

Next beta update please.

There's unlikely to be another update for the remainder of the year, though we are planning to begin releasing updates in the new year.

[thegreybetween]

Next beta update please.

Why? Do you actually enjoy the many updates and improvements that come with patch iterations, or do you just like having more threads to necro with jabs at the devs for not fixing whatever "super simple" pet issue currently has your hackles up? I get that it can be frustrating waiting for a fix, especially when it *seems* like low-hanging fruit from our user perspective. The occasional bump and reminder is probably helpful, but the devs have acknowledged that these things are on their list and will be addressed at some point, so the only thing beating the dead horse is doing is making your posts easier for them to dismiss. I mean, by all means, you do you. But when the official answer is "we're working on it, please be patient", it seems like being patient and letting them work on it is a healthy, constructive approach. YMMV.

[rxnnxs]

Next beta update please.

I also am waiting eagerly for some new improvements. It would be the time (in schedule).
I did not read any message regarding that they are done this year (well, now I read the answer from MaximKI).

And I do not think that you asked for too much when writing this short sentence

[thegreybetween]

Next beta update please.

I also am waiting eagerly for some new improvements. It would be the time (in schedule).
I did not read any message regarding that they are done this year (well, now I read the answer from MaximKI).

And I do not think that you asked for too much when writing this short sentence

For clarity, my above post was in response to a wave of recent thread bumps of which this was just one. And it was before my morning tea, so probably uncalled for anyway. That said, there were a blitz of terse "still not fixed" comments that seemed unconstructive and triggered my white-knight impulse. I'm also looking forward to the next update, for the record.

[fruitgnome]

unconstructive?
For one I gave the solution.
Read my last pushed posts. And then search when I posted them for the first time (maybe in other threads).
The game concept of gaining bad reputation cause the ai is colonizing independant worlds is the point I not play this game anymore and the fact that I can't start in the center. Start from edge is boring.

[MaximKI]

Happy New Years everyone!

A new public beta is live now with fixes, tweaks, and balancing changes. See OP for details.

[InfoBit]

I am not sure if I should post bugs in this thread. Let me know if I should move it.

After updating to version 1.2.0.0, I have a bug when zooming in to the system level. At this point, there seems to be a bugged ship that is automatically selected when I click on any ship or base station in the same system. The ship information appears in the corner of the screen (see screenshot at the top left), and when I try to click any other entity on that system, that ship is automatically selected.

[btd64]

I am not sure if I should post bugs in this thread. Let me know if I should move it.

After updating to version 1.2.0.0, I have a bug when zooming in to the system level. At this point, there seems to be a bugged ship that is automatically selected when I click on any ship or base station in the same system. The ship information appears in the corner of the screen (see screenshot at the top left), and when I try to click any other entity on that system, that ship is automatically selected.

Hi there. Do you have a save that reproduces this problem? If so, post it in the tech forum....GP

[InfoBit]

Hi there. Do you have a save that reproduces this problem? If so, post it in the tech forum....GP

Yes, I have it. I just opened a thread in the tech forum. Thanks

[btd64]

Hi there. Do you have a save that reproduces this problem? If so, post it in the tech forum....GP

Yes, I have it. I just opened a thread in the tech forum. Thanks

No problem....GP

[Buio]

New update 1.2.x looks good. A lot of good updates and features. Tested the beta a bit.

[Neurobed]

... there seems to be a bugged ship that is automatically selected when I click on any ship or base station in the same system...

...I confirm, in my case the ship is a transport, in some cases it is not really possible to select another object (ship or planet) with a click but only with shift+drag...

[btd64]

... there seems to be a bugged ship that is automatically selected when I click on any ship or base station in the same system...

...I confirm, in my case the ship is a transport, in some cases it is not really possible to select another object (ship or planet) with a click but only with shift+drag...

Please post a Save showing that is repeatable....GP

[MaximKI]

A new public beta is now live! See OP for details.

[thegreybetween]

Some great stuff here. 1.2.X is going to be a very welcome improvement when it hits the main branch! I never play the betas, but there are definitely some features here that have me salivating. Keep up the great work. Cheers!