Distant Worlds 2

This isn't a game to me. It feels more like a fun strategic simulation. I was hesitant to buy, overwhelmed by the scope. In reality, it doesn't take that long to go from full automation just picking research, to gradually going mostly manual. In my experience the first manual settings I changed were the fleets, then exploration ships. Once you master one aspect of the game you move on to the next and then configure your new focus as needed. I love Stellaris, but after a while it dropped to number 2 after sticking with it and getting more and more experienced with DW2

still not worth 50$ sadly.. many issues, updates are far and few not much of a different game than on release. DLC overpriced for a game still in Beta , 3 years later hopefully one day it'll live up to universe

Imagine if Stellaris had actual RTS combat rather than being a grand strategy autobattler. That's basically Distant Worlds 2. Grand strategy, empire building, and actual RTS space combat with individual unit control. It's a lot more open-ended too, like a space game should be. There are a lot of automation options for convenience but they are not required and some are not optimal to use (like AI fleet control). Reviews getting hung up on automation are missing the point. In general they can enhance the game by skipping certain things the player might subjectively find tedious. That's all. DW2 has a moderately high learning curve so might not be fun before understanding the basic systems and controls. There are a fair number of rough edges that could, in theory, be improved or reworked. For instance, the ship upgrade system could use better streamlining. And the map needs more view modes that can be toggled on and off permanently.

If you like to micromanage everything in a game, this game is definitely for you. There is a LOT to do and a LOT going on. I am not that type of gamer, so I was trying to use the many automation features. It was frequently an exercise in frustration because there isn't feedback as to why the automation features aren't trying to do what the player wants. My biggest one was invading planets in empires that I was at war with. There was seemingly nothing I could do to get the invasions to actually happen. The fleets would get the invasion mission, but do nothing, and then decide to do something else like retrofitting or loading troops even though they were fully stocked with troops. But invasions of neutral empires seemed to generally happen at a decent level, so I learned to start wars by invading because then at least I would get those planets before the game couldn't do invasions against that same empire once the war started. Manual invasions seemed to work fine. I had empires that I was at war with, and with a setting of conquer, but the game would go 100+ years without any progress being made on either side (no units at all lost) when everything was automated. About 10% of my planets would need a common abundant resource to build anything but the smallest, earliest starbases and would never be supplied those things while automated - even after more than 200 years. There were many systems that weren't fully explored, even though there were no known threats or dangerous locations and I had lots of idle automated exploration ships with late game technology. There would be long stretches when no automated research at all would be done even though I had a lot of saved money and a positive cashflow. Manually, things generally worked and didn't have those issues. There are also design choices that seemed very odd to me. A LOT happens while the game is paused. I would frequently get dozens and dozens of messages while the game was paused. They were coming so fast that I couldn't read them all before some started getting overwritten. I have never experienced a game doing so much while paused. This was definitely a problem for me because there is no sense of importance to messages or a way to do anything but turn entire categories of messages on or off. An example is plague messages. Generally I would want to know, but I would have to turn them completely off because they would overwrite important war-related messages because they would show up dozens at a time. Also, I don't think there is ever a situation where I would care about civilian ships attacking something, because the civilian ship is always going to lose. But I would just get spammed with those messages and my only option was to turn off all "being attacked" type messages. Another design choice example is that hardly any structures/facilities get built on planets. They are inexpensive and generally seem useful, so I would manually build a lot of them. But when automated, it was incredibly rare for any of my planets to build anything at all. And it wasn't just my empire, it was very rare to see an opposing colony have more than two things built. I think most I ever saw was five. Then there are things like troop levels at colonies. Even the very highest setting is incredibly low. I would need to manually recruit a lot of troops until the very late game because the automated settings were all so low. It seems like the settings are heavily biased toward certain playstyles - which apparently aren't playstyles I use. I have three pieces of advice for new players. 1) Use your first game to decide what parts of the game game you like/dislike and then set the game creation settings to an extreme (left or right) value to reflect that. Other than the galaxy shape/size screen (which is limited by a player's hardware), I set every other setting to an extreme value and I thought it made the game more fun. 2) Never trade your maps unless you see the trading partner as a long term ally. It just seems like the other empires trade their map knowledge instantly with everyone. So any advantage you had by having uncolonized systems or useful pirates or whatever goes away immediately when trading maps. 3) Use a no tech stealing workshop mod. This is basically for the same reason as the previous one - other empires do it all the time and any advantage goes away immediately. Overall, I played for more than 100 hours, so I definitely felt the game had value, but I believe it is a much better experience for people who want to manually control everything.

Fleet automation is completely broken, which is an extreme problem as soon as you have an empire of any scale. Defensive fleets regularly jump to locations that enemy fleets have just left, leaving core worlds completely open to invasion. Fleets routinely decide to retrofit at the worst possible times. AI will run circles around your fleets unless you micromanage them to an infinite degree as they are incapable of making any decisions.

This game is nothing but frustration, you spend 2 hours exploring your starting area only to find out there are no colonizable planets, none. Then before finding a single colonizable planet, or independent colony you could befriend or conquer you run into a Boskara that will spend the remainder of their existance making your game a slow decline into madness, it doesnt matter that they wont be able to win, they will die and take you with them as the war weakens you enough for others to kill you or put to you far behind the curve. So why do I have so many hours in it? because the game is painfully slow, you keep restarting because every once in a while you get a good start, and then you steamroll everyone because the game is either 2 hours of not knowing you lost the game in the galaxy generation, or a game where the only thing stopping you from winning is broken automation or far to tedious micromanagement.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time playing the game, looking forward to see how the game evolves in the future.