Video Series: A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLDS 2

[DasTactic]

I've gotten hold of the raw footage Erik used in his excellent preview. Below are 6 videos where I painstakingly step through and pause the content to speculate as much as I can on what DW2 is going to bring.

The videos will be scheduled for release over the next few days but the links will take you through to them before they are public.


A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's latest Game Setup video

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Empire and Economy

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Information Panels

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Research and Ship Designs

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Exploration and Resources

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Space Combat

[Galaxy227]

Watching right now, thanks for sharing!

[Nilma]

Very impressed with your pausing skills Das. Looking forward to your dissections on the other videos!

[Erik Rutins]

Excellent, looking forward to watching your analysis. [:)][8D]

[Erik Rutins]

If any of you haven't watched this, you should. Das does a great job of catching all the little details you may have missed.

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[Erik Rutins]

Indeed, looking forward to his gameplay and fleet battle one. There are a lot of things I did not comment on or call out simply because I didn't have time.

[DasTactic]

I'm sure I missed a lot of info in the fleet combat video. The action looks great though.

I've just uploaded the series now with links in the opening post. Please keep in mind that the commentary is purely speculation on my part and is highly likely to be incorrect. I must say, the more I look at the footage the more I like about the changes coming with DW2.

The videos will be scheduled for release over the coming days but the links above will take you through to them prior to release.

[Cauldyth]

Thanks Das! You saved us all a lot of time studying the videos ourselves. [:)]

It's funny, as you analyze the paused game and are unsure of what a button does, I'm thinking to myself "Just click it and find ou... oh, right, you're just watching a video..." [:D]

[balto]

Super helpful. Das is awesome.

[Whiskiz]

Cheers Das, nice vid.

Glad to see you're as excited as the rest of us [:'(]

I just watched your review of the Space Combat and i thought about your views on Salvage, how you hope it's an automatic thing that can just be picked up by any ship any time or whatever and i must say i don't know about that.

Any battles you win you just auto pickup all the salvage, so it becomes a non existent mechanic and just means you get some resources every fight. The same for the NPCs.

To need a separate salvage ship adds a whole new mechanic, where you can do things like send salvage ships to a big battle that just happened between 2 other empires or something. If the Space Rats don't get to the salvage before you [:'(]

There's also the decision making and risk/reward of whether to send like a construction-ship esque thing to go hoover up some free mats in a potentially risky, ongoing conflict prone area and other situations that could make for some cool gameplay.

If it's nothing more than just auto pickup as you go or quickly grab with an exploration ship then it's reduced to barely a new mechanic at all.

If you find that too much micro-management, as with anything else it doesn't need to be done. Maybe there could be orders and automation for salvage ships or you don't need to actually do salvaging if you don't want to, as it just means some extra resources at the end of the day.

To say nothing of it being unrealistic that just any ship, especially military or small explorers can pick up and hold salvage as they go.

[Miletkir]

I know it's not final, but ship explosions look a bit like special effects from the 70s, and they are too much. There's no oxygen in space. I think it would look and feel nicer to have for instance a bubbly, blueish effect from local ionization when the reactor implodes.

I also noticed that Ackdarian freighters look like brine shrimps. I wonder if that's intentional given the background of the species [;)]

[Whiskiz]

Funny you should mention the explosions, i thought the bigger explosions looked odd too but for different reasons.

They still look like (nicer but still) puffs that are overlayed over the ships, instead of coming from inside the ship and blowing it apart, as well as the animation being really quick and finishing really quick like they're trying to save on resources or something.

Would like to kind of see small beams of light coming out of the bigger ships for a couple of seconds, like the reactors getting ready to go supernova and then a somewhat slower, more grandiose explosion coming from inside the ship and blowing it apart with surrounding debris.

After all the eye candy is a big focal point of the game, as well as combat being slower and more meaningful so the destruction of each bigger ship also being more meaningful.

It's currently a quick explosion puff overlay then a smoke puff overlay that starts slightly later and that's mostly it.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: DasTactic

I've gotten hold of the raw footage Erik used in his excellent preview. Below are 6 videos where I painstakingly step through and pause the content to speculate as much as I can on what DW2 is going to bring.

The videos will be scheduled for release over the next few days but the links will take you through to them before they are public.


A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's latest Game Setup video

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Empire and Economy

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Information Panels

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Research and Ship Designs

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Exploration and Resources

A Weaponized Nerd's look at DISTANT WORLD 2's Space Combat

Loaded up the first video and just LOL'ed when I saw it was almost 35 minutes. I'll have to schedule this in spare time piece by piece over the next fortnight! Nice work Das.

[DasTactic]

Thanks for the comments.

I see your point, Whiskiz. It was an aspect of Stellaris that was just more micro-management for me but perhaps it could be automated with Exploration ships.

[Bleek]

I literally replayed the space battle over and over to see what I could spot. Even at faster to speeds to get the 'real' feel.

Then Das rocks up and out nerds me.

I really like in battles everything is happening 'as it should'. Projectiles. Lasers. Torpedoes. Fighters. Manoeuvrers. Shields.

By the looks of it you could automate everything else and just command battles. Nice.

I think I like the new damage system too, the display of on/off/damaged etc components is very handy. I assume you need a certain level of scanners to see that in you enemies ship data.

[arvcran2]

I was having difficulty differentiating between fighters from missiles/incoming weapon fire. I wonder how many Ackdarian ships managed to escape . Very kewl.

DW1 Attack postures were an interesting strategic aspect of the game. Yet I did not see any Youtube play-throughs using that feature. I hope it is still in DW2!

Erik eluded that DW2 now has tactical configurable roles as well as fleet compositions. Am looking forward to seeing the design of these features!

[SirHoraceHarkness]

ORIGINAL: Miletkir

I know it's not final, but ship explosions look a bit like special effects from the 70s, and they are too much. There's no oxygen in space. I think it would look and feel nicer to have for instance a bubbly, blueish effect from local ionization when the reactor implodes.

I also noticed that Ackdarian freighters look like brine shrimps. I wonder if that's intentional given the background of the species [;)]

Remember that when a ship explodes it also vaporizes all the fuel and warheads and metal and organic mass along with any atmosphere it contains so an explosion is going to be quite complex. You could even color some of the explosions by what the race mainly breaths since different gasses burn in different colors.

[Miletkir]

Gazes dissipate very quickly in the void of space and combustion does not occur like it would inside an oxygen-rich atmosphere (as is currently depicted). It doesn't have to be physically accurate, it's just a bit too much fire right now I find.

[Whiskiz]

ORIGINAL: Miletkir

Gazes dissipate very quickly in the void of space and combustion does not occur like it would inside an oxygen-rich atmosphere (as is currently depicted). It doesn't have to be physically accurate, it's just a bit too much fire right now I find.

I find that's more due to it being like an explosion overlay, instead of coming from inside the ship and/or the explosion generally being surrounded by debris/detail. It's currently just a fire puff (and a smoke puff)