1.2.7.7 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.

The Core game engine has been upgraded to use newer versions of Stride and .NET. We now include .NET 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 1.2.7.7 (November 26th, 2024)

CRASH FIXES
- fixed rare crash when rendering button

SHAKTURI CRISIS
- prevent Shakturi empire from reappearing in Diplomacy screen after has been eliminated

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- fixed Upgrade Planetary Facility button sometimes not working from Planetary Facilities list when the upgrade would exceed allocated facility maintenance funding level (will now always upgrade when player manually initiates)

FLEET BEHAVIOR
- improved Fleet Refuel from Tankers mission: no longer requires fleets to be idle, thus available in most situations

DIPLOMACY
- fixed trade deal valuation relating to Territory and Galaxy Maps and related treaties (both sides of deal properly reflect zero-valued items)
- further improved automated selection of ambassador locations

STARFIGHTERS
- fighters now more careful to avoid selecting targets that are nearby, and never outside current location
- fighters will now stop automated attacks against a target if it is being boarded, thus better allowing capture missions to succeed

QUAMENO AND GIZUREAN DLC
- Adjusted Gizurean All Research penalty to -15% (from previously increased -20%)


Changes in 1.2.7.5 (November 22nd, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when selecting government for empire while generating galaxy
- fixed rare crash when determining whether a ship is targeted by incoming weapons

PERFORMANCE
- improved performance of galaxy generation

GALAXY SETTINGS
- fixed Colony Event setting in Start New Game screen so that when disabled it properly turns off disasters and randomly-initiated plagues

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- added Upgrade Facility button directly to list items in Planetary Facilities list when upgrade option available
- added new filter to Planetary Facilities list: Upgrade Available, which shows facilities that can be upgraded
- added extra filter options to Known Ruins list for various bonus types (Empire, Research, etc.)
- messages relating to recovered navigational coordinates (e.g. from ruins or salvaged debris) now also usually includes the name of the nearest location (when known to the player)
- remaining number of Outposts your empire can establish is now displayed in tooltip for 'Queue Outpost' buttons in New Colonies and Outposts list
- split out display of empire vs location bonuses in Artifact summary
- added warning to tooltip for 'Queue Resort Base' button when there are no nearby tourism sources (large, well-developed colonies), thus making the location unlikely to be viable for a Resort Base
- fixed Form Alliance button sometimes being incorrectly disabled when in game with Shakturi story disabled
- fixed incorrect game star date in preview panel in Load Game screen
- added list of installed DLCS to top-right corner of main menu screen

FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- improved ability of fleets to remain in place to defend locations against incoming enemy fleets (avoid taking on other missions or going after creatures)
- ships and colonies now properly auto-respond to attacks from foreign ships when not at war with the attacking faction
- increased default Defense fleet engagement range from 50M to 100M
- improved automated selection of Defense fleet home bases so that better distribution throughout empire territory, with less clustering or overlap

RUINS
- fixed Ruins summary sometimes showing details when ruins not properly known
- fixed some filters in Ruins list improperly evaluating unexplored ruins as known

TOURISM
- rebalanced Tourism income so that better return from Resort Bases. The scenery bonus amount at the location is also now a more important factor for income

MODDING
- re-enabled full Chinese language support by updating both DW2 and the DW2ChsPatch mod. These changes further enable Harmony modding in DW2
- the Chinese language mod can serve as a template for other languages that use custom character-sets and fonts, e.g. Cyrillic languages, Japanese, Korean, etc
- Localization modders: please ask if you'd like support to get this working for your language

SOUND EFFECTS
- fixed issue that could cause some sound effects to not play during combat

DATA
- fixed some issues with incorrect Ship Hull component bay sizes for hangars and general bays in a few ship and station hulls

Changes in 1.2.7.3 (November 15th, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- improved handling of invalid display adapter settings when resolving screen display mode
- fixed crash when calculating system visibility level
- fixed crash when updating known system data
- fixed crash when reviewing construction of new planetary facilities

SHAKTURI CRISIS
- locations of Shakturi rifts and beacons are now further away from player than previously
- ensure cannot expel 2nd to last member from Freedom Alliance so does not disband alliance

DIPLOMACY TRADE VALUATION
- increased amount player pays for items in diplomacy trade deals (relative to other empire)
- fixed pirate factions sometimes overvaluing Hyperdrive tech in diplomacy trade deals
- fixed some research projects being valued too low in diplomacy trade deals
- doubled value of territory and galaxy maps in diplomacy trade deals
- fixed diplomacy trade deals not properly evaluating territory/galaxy maps and territory/galaxy map sharing treaties when offered together (territory maps should be valued at zero if galaxy map also included, galaxy maps should be valued at zero when galaxy map sharing treaty also included)
- reduced value of ruins in diplomacy trade deals when have special research bonuses or are otherwise rated highly
- halved value of independent colony locations in diplomacy trade deals
- halved value of ruins and other special locations in diplomacy trade deals
- altered value of Contact Empire items in diplomacy trade deals so that very large empires are not dramatically different from smaller empires

DIPLOMACY
- fixed First Contact messages often having blank empire and race names

FLEET AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- added new fleet mission: Refuel from Fuel Tankers. Select fleet and right-click for pop-up menu option. Fleet will be refuelled at current location by fuel tankers. Fleet must be idle (no mission) and have available fuel tankers
- now properly check whether foreign Assault Pod is hostile before intercepting with tractor beams (may be ally assisting with colony invasion, raid or capture)

SHIP DESIGN
- fixed situation where automated ship and base designs may very rarely not be refreshed upon researching new tech

DANGEROUS LOCATIONS
- extended 'Investigate Dangerous Location' missions to also include Defend fleets, however will not assign Defend fleets when your empire is at war

TROOPS
- RecruitedTroopStrength bonuses now properly apply when recruit new troops

PLANETARY FACILITIES AND RUINS
- fixed planetary facility values for Bombardment Resistance and Ground Combat Resistance. Previously the values were improperly inverted where 0.2 was displayed as 80% resistance. It turns out this was incorrect and has now been changed so that 0.8 = 80% resistance. All data files have also been updated
- all generic ruins now have values added for Bombardment Resistance and Ground Combat Resistance

MINING LOCATIONS
- New Mining Stations list (and other lists for new bases) now properly disables 'Queue Base' button and shows missing construction resources in tooltip when have no spaceports and even colony does not have adequate construction resources

MIGRATION
- added description of migration status for each colony in Population screen from Selection Panel. Shows how likely population is to migrate away from or towards colony
- added sorting options in Colonies & Outposts list for Migration status

SPACE CREATURES
- Vordikar creature strength now factored higher to ensure more fleet strength assigned to attack

COLONIZATION
- fixed Colony Ships repeatedly loading/unloading population when queued colonization target can no longer be colonized because has since become part of another empire's territory

CHARACTERS
- further improved location selection for automated Ambassadors

EVENTS
- fixed planets and stars for some story locations sometimes being invisible
- most Ruins bonuses are now empire-wide instead of location-specific (but with lower amounts), thus making them more appealing as Outpost targets

DATA
– corrected typo giving Medium Space Ports too large a targeting bonus
– increased bombardment resistance slightly for planetary shield facilities
– greatly increased bombardment resistance for planetary bastion facilities
– increased empire bonus for recreation tech tree facilities
– improved Zenox Galactic Archives wonder

QUAMENO AND GIZUREAN DLC
– Gizurean penalty to All Research changed to -20% (from -10%)

Changes in 1.2.7.1 (November 8th, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed rare crash when determining location visibility
- fixed rare crash when calculating research project score
- fixed crash with Establish Outpost task
- fixed rare crash when performing exploration
- fixed issue with ending wars with vassals

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS
- altered background game processing so that some higher-priority tasks happen more frequently: delayed game events, Shakturi story logic, research progression

SHAKTURI CRISIS
- moved virus deployment projects to TL5 and added a prereq path from their respective virus cure projects (requires a new game)
- revised Neutralize Shakturi beacon event to remove reference to the beacon core artifact
- altered Shakturi research war missions to be select more achieveable projects

DIPLOMACY AND VASSALS
- fixed diplomatic relation incident values sometimes being reset to zero when very large intervals between updating
- diplomatic offers to vassalized empires are now properly discarded (no independent diplomacy) so that not incorrectly responded to later once empire is no longer a vassal (e.g. gifts and treaty offers)
- vassals are also included when war ends between empires, i.e. when two empires agree to end war, their vassals will also end the war

FLEETS AND SHIP BEHAVIOR
- improved fleet responsiveness to investigating dangerous locations, both queued and non-queued. fixes a long-standing but difficult to find issue which caused many of the situations where some queued dangerous locations or targets outside of jump range but within engagement range were not being assigned a fleet.
- fixed independent colonies sometimes being automatically invaded (or blockaded, bombarded, etc) despite diplomatic strategy of 'Diplomacy leading to peaceful Colonization'.
- ships now better at avoiding dangerous and enemy locations when determining waypoints in jump path
- fixed raiding pirate ships sometimes getting confused about mission when switch from base to ship for target (should not raid ships)

BOMBARDMENT
- further reduced chance of characters and artifacts being destroyed during colony bombardment

PLANETARY FACILITIES
- tweaked logic so that facility building automation works better for some facilities which were incorrectly being treated as wonders (e.g. Special Operations Barracks and Planetary Defense Center)

OUTPOSTS
- added extra detail to button tooltip when cannot upgrade an Outpost to a Colony
- Galactopedia topic on Outposts now has explanation on upgrading Outposts to Colonies
- Queue Establish Outpost button now properly disabled when already at limit of one Outpost per Colony (with explanation in tooltip)

DATA CHANGES
- Increased Mortalen growth rate by 1%
- reduced size of Mortalen Block Armor and improved its reactive rating
- strengthened bonuses for all Spaceports, Defensive Bases and Carriers
- buffed Ion Shield components to increase ion defense
- fixed game events 'Ancient Clone Planet Chain' and 'Lost Teekan Colony' so that no longer artificially inflate planet quality

Changes in 1.2.6.9 (November 1st, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- fixed crash when applying game setting changes before starting/loading a game in the session

Changes in 1.2.6.8 (October 31st, 2024):

CRASH FIXES
- Rare Timing Issues: added game setting to allow changing how time progression works in-game. Can be used to fix crashes and timing issues on some CPU/hardware configurations. If you are experiencing otherwise unresolved crashes, especially if you see timing mentioned in the crash log, please use the setting 'Game Timing Mode' at the bottom of the General section to switch to 'Always Use Safe Mode'
- fixed rare crash when binding messages
- fixed rare crash when loading a game
- fixed crash when progressing Shakturi rift destabilization
- fixed crash when checking Shakturi story victory conditions
- fixed crash when resolving tradeable research projects
- fixed crash when selecting design components
- fixed crash when reviewing empire's planetary facilities
- fixed crash when drawing race summary with faulty component data
- fixed crash when initializing game
- fixed rare crash when drawing Colonies list
- fixed rare crash when drawing Selection Panel

SHAKTURI CRISIS
We have improved a variety of cases to make the crisis and story progression more robust. Most of these are related to the path where the player joins the Shaktur Axis or does not join either alliance.
- ensure fallback option to provide planet destroyer tech to all members of both Freedom Alliance and Shaktur Axis occurs even when player is not a member of the Freedom Alliance
- when part of Shaktur Axis, you can propose votes, but vote outcome will be immediately decided by Shakturi (they are the only ones who actually get a vote in the Shaktur Axis)
- if player joins Shaktur Axis at any point then prevent any further event messages relating to Ancient Guardian communications
- when player is member of Shaktur Axis then modify the message relating to the arrival of Shakturi planet destroyers so that player sees this as a welcome development, and is not instructed to destroy them
- Shakturi Rise Again messages now also tailored for situation where player is either in the Shaktur Axis or neutral (not a member of Freedom Alliance or Shaktur Axis)
- when an empire joins the Shaktur Axis the Shakturi immediately gift them the cure for Shakturi Psionic Virus
- disable 'Trouble in the Fleet' events when empire is a member of the Shaktur Axis
- now always get proper welcome message when join Shaktur Axis or Freedom Alliance
- Shakturi no longer care about diplomatic envy of others power, thus allowing them to better add members to the Shaktur Axis
- event chain where Shakturi approach Boskara to establish Shaktur Axis no longer fires when Boskara and Shakturi are already at war. Will also stop if war breaks out during negotiations
- Shakturi story event 'Capture a Beacon' will no longer trigger when player is member of Shaktur Axis
- now check for early Shakturi defeat where they lose all colonies, outposts and colony ships prior to start of Shakturi war. Send message to player if achieved
- ensure Shakturi Wormhole effects are removed from beacon location when beacon is destroyed, even when planet is destroyed
- fixed EndColonyEvent game event action so that selects correct colony event. This ensures that 'Beacon Impacting Research' and 'Beacon Heavily Impacting Research' colony events are properly cleared during the Shakturi story

WAR MISSIONS
- Shakturi war mission to destroy Shakturi beacons now calculates victory bonus amount based on remaining number of beacons that Shakturi control. This alleviates problems in some cases with getting to 100% victory for the Freedom Alliance where Shakturi only obtain control of some of the beacon locations, thus providing less opportunity to earn victory bonus using previous static values per beacon.
- prevent sometimes getting duplicate war missions for same facility target (e.g. same Shakturi Beacon)
- improved removal of war mission events at end of war so that not improperly triggered later
- ensure all war mission completion messages honor 'Suppress All Popups' setting

FLEET BEHAVIOR
- when fleets are evaluating an attack against a base at a colony, they are now more careful to include the defensive strength from the colony itself (fighters, weapon facilities)
- fleets are more careful to include colony defensive strength (fighters, weapon facilities) when considering whether a fleet will retreat from a location when attacking
- Planet Destroyer ship strength is now evaluated much lower (because damage consideration for super weapons is capped), thus making fleets much more likely to consider them viable targets and attack them

UI IMPROVEMENTS
- war score in main view header bar now shown as millions once above 10M or below -10M
- fixed Combat Map Overlay button sometimes retaining highlight color when toggled off

ECONOMY
- state base building at colonies (e.g. spaceports) now also considers large cash on hand as potential cashflow when considering whether to build new bases. This mirrors what happens with construction of state ships and potentially allows construction of first spaceport when Refugee Fleet colonizes first world but has low income due to low population

INTELLIGENCE MISSIONS
- auto-assigned spy missions for 'Infect Colony with Plague' now preferentially selects known colony targets with populations that are susceptible to the plague used (for example, using the Xaraktor virus on primarily Shakturi-populated worlds)

CHARACTERS
- improved character location selection so that more spread out and less location churn
- improved distribution of ambassadors to foreign empire capitals where diplomatic strategy is aiming for ally status with high-level treaties

ALLIANCES
- fixed cases where the player was unable to manually respond to 'Join Alliance' offer messages
- ensure all members of same alliance use diplomatic strategy of Close Ally with each other

ARTIFACTS
- characters and artifacts are now much harder to destroy via bombardment
- ensure artifacts destroyed in colony bombardment do not respawn

RESEARCH
- increased research priority for super weapons and planet destroyer hulls

[MaximKI]

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

[MaximKI]

New public beta live now! See OP for details.

[fruitgnome]

seems to be a great beta. If the fixes work - great work on long time bugs. THX so much for this great game.

[fruitgnome]

...
- fixed independent colonies sometimes being automatically invaded (or blockaded, bombarded, etc) despite diplomatic strategy of 'Diplomacy leading to peaceful Colonization'.
...

Not really fixed. As I wrote so many times we need a policy setting for this. Your fix only works if you stay all the time in diplomacy screen and change every invade to diplomacy manual for the not liked races.

[arvcran2]

...
- fixed independent colonies sometimes being automatically invaded (or blockaded, bombarded, etc) despite diplomatic strategy of 'Diplomacy leading to peaceful Colonization'.
...

Not really fixed. As I wrote so many times we need a policy setting for this. Your fix only works if you stay all the time in diplomacy screen and change every invade to diplomacy manual for the not liked races.

Seconded.

[MaximKI]

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

[MaximKI]

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

[Erik Rutins]

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