START HERE: Latest Troubleshooting FAQ

[imulling]

First off I want to say I really enjoy the game - its truly one of my favorites right now. I originally posted this somewhere else because I was new to the forums and hadn't found the troubleshooting forum yet. I'm re-posting it here since this seems like it should be the place for these kinds of concerns. If I've missed something and there are settings in the game to allow me to make these changes now, please let me know in as 'diplomatic' a way as possible.

I think the A.I. needs some new options added in and a bit of tweaking when it comes to constantly suggesting courses of action that one would rather never be bothered with again. For some of us, giving A.I. full autonomy on certain things is not an option but we also don't want to be bombarded with one bad idea after another. There are two primary types of notifications I get which I want to disable or set up a filter to decrease the prevalence of, thus giving me only the ones I actually care about. With all of the pop-up notifications I get from diplomacy, military, exploration, or civilian ships being attacked, I can sometimes barely have time to enjoy an otherwise awesome game while I am bombarded by what greatly resembles spam in some ways. I have three ideas I want to get some feedback on.
First, lets talk about unwanted diplomatic communications and suggestions. Particularly in mid- to late-game, and because I like to play with lots of factions including pirates and legit empires, I have the A.I. and people calling me up and suggesting trades or treaties that I really couldn't care less about. A new diplomacy setting on certain factions like "ignore" or "maintain current relations only" would be ever so helpful. When set to automated with those settings, perhaps then the A.I. would simply ignore those factions when they try to contact me and/or would only maintain the current diplomatic agreements I have set up. Once I get a non-aggression treaty with a pirate, I never want to talk to them again unless they go hostile again, for example.
Second, I unfortunately have lots of civilian ships which come under fire from space monsters all the time, and particularly more frequently in large galaxies or when space creatures are turned up to a high setting. It can take a while for my military to mop them up. The irony is my civilian ships usually automatically escape from such creatures with no problems, but by the time I have zoomed in on the ship in question and determined it is in no real danger before it jumps out of the area, my attention has been diverted unnecessarily for too long. What I want is a new setting where I no longer get a notification when a space creature is moving aggressively toward my ships, but instead I want a notification when a ship has actually taken damage. Better yet, a method of telling civilian ships to automatically avoid areas with reported space monsters at all costs would be very nice.
Third, it would be extremely helpful if certain notification types had a different notification sound or better yet, could be assigned a different notification sound of my choice. Then I could more easily figure out what is important to pay attention to and what is not. I could more easily distinguish between a prompt to build a new resource base and a massive incoming hostile fleet, based on sound alone.

[Erik Rutins]

Updated the FAQ to reflect our latest tips.

[Balois]

Since updating to 1.1.4.4 the game will no longer launch. The launcher opens and I click on the start button, the cursor spins for a few seconds and then the window closed and I'm back at the steam launch page. I have verified all files (discovered 9 that were missing) and they would not reload so I removed all local files and reinstalled. I then verified all files were good. No success. I then manually deleted all files in the steam folder for DW2 as well as the folder in discussions. Reloaded the game and tried again. Same outcome. I also tried to direct launch from the app and that failed as well. On the steam forums there are other players with the same issue.

I rolled back to the previous version and it loads normally.

In the logs folder all I have is a placeholder file with 0kb. Previous to doing a complete delete and reinstall I did have a session log and this was the only issues I could see:

Bundle successfully loaded: Dhayut
26-05-2023 15-20-32.494: Checking for bundle file /data/db/bundles/Quameno.bundle
26-05-2023 15-20-32.494: WARNING - bundle not found: /data/db/bundles/Quameno.bundle
26-05-2023 15-20-32.495: Checking for bundle file /data/db/bundles/Shakturi.bundle
26-05-2023 15-20-32.495: WARNING - bundle not found: /data/db/bundles/Shakturi.bundle
26-05-2023 15-20-32.496: Loading Mod Content Bundles
26-05-2023 15-20-33.515: Deleting GameSettings file as requested
26-05-2023 15-20-33.516: GameSettings file deleted
26-05-2023 15-20-33.517: Generating new default GameSettings
26-05-2023 15-20-33.521: Selecting Default Display Settings

[attachment=0]DxDiag.txt[/attachment

Please advise

[fruitgnome]

Directx or vulkan? Set on Directx if vulkan per line command.
If this didn't help, try deinstall and reinstall game, helped me one time.

[Balois]

Already tried both of your ideas (DirectX 11and reinstalling) and it had no impact.

[RStadler]

I have an MSI I9 computer with 64 gb ram and GeForce 4070Ti and had nothing but problems running the game with the same crashes everyone else has posted. After doing everything suggested in this thread and even doing the nuclear option of a new clean windows 11 install, I contacted Microsoft support for help. We spent four hours running diagnostics and confirming that I had no hardware issues and had all the latest drivers installed. The last thing we checked was the GPU and it showed a relatively high operating temperature even though we had not been doing any intensive graphics. He suggested I try the MSI Afterburner app to change the fan settings to come on sooner and stay on once the GPU started to heat up. Since I made the change I have been able to play the game without any crashes for over 40 hours now. I'm posting this in the hopes that it may benefit others who are having the issues. When the GPU overheats the graphics freeze and you do not get a crash report. Also, I do not overclock my CPU or GPU, I simply allow the GPU fan to run on high. It is a little noisy but, the game is playable.

[Teranos]

At the beginning I would like to thank the development team for this wonderful game and I really want to continue playing it! But after a some pause, I returned to the game and discovered that some of the effects during battles had disappeared. I tested the game and this is what I found:

It looks like there is a bug in the game related to the effects of explosions from hits and explosions of fighters/bombers. The cool effects of mini-explosions from projectiles when hitting ships, as well as the effects of explosions from fighters/bombers, disappear after a few seconds of battle and don't appear at all anymore. Moreover, a complete reboot of the game is necessary to see them again. And again only for a few seconds.

Here are some links to youtube
For some reason I can’t place them in the window here

https://youtu.be/7LAtl0xlH-c
https://youtu.be/j8FpC_ProK4
https://youtu.be/bMnJsaicV5k
https://youtu.be/V9TgABhEiPA
https://youtu.be/hLCndCvbFZA

Videos with fighters/bombers:
https://youtu.be/ABXGXhgN1OE
https://youtu.be/CmpgBDFgNIA
https://youtu.be/v4hQ9Bs5cbk



At first I decided that this might be due to the incorrect operation of my system.
what did I do
1. Cleanly reinstalled the drivers on the video card (Nvidia RTX3060)
2. Completely deleted the game and all files that remain after deletion. And reinstalled
3. Disabled all mods and deleted them.
4. Tried using Standard range rendering/high dynamic range rendering
5. Direct X 11/Vulcan 1.10.3/Vulcan 2.3.0
6. Tried different screen resolutions
7. Tried different Minimum/Maximum effect rates
8. I tried the smallest maps for 300 stars and for a small number of empires (3-5)
9. Tried legacy 1.2.0.5 and legacybeta 1.2.0.8
10. Tried different values of system load target
Nothing helped.
also added my graphics settings (Attachments)

I would like to know if this is normal for the current state of the game (optimized) or is it not normal?
-If this is not normal, then is it possible to fix it in future patches?
-And if this is normal, like this kind of optimization method, then i wonder - is there a solution for me, and for other players who are ready to sacrifice performance and still get beautiful fleet battles?

Because I really love epic spaceship battles in space and was one of those die-hard grunt fans who was very reluctant to switch from DW:U to DW2, but it did happen thanks to that presentation video where Erik at the end showed off these beautiful epic effects of mini-explosions during the collision of the Akdarian and Mortalen fleets.