Distant Worlds 2

this game is freaking cringe

This game feels like a better, but smaller scale version of Star Ruler 1 or like Stellaris with actual ships. Or a top down version of X4 Foundations with planets or the defunct MMO Shores of Hazeron (but without control over mining and transportships). It does lack real ground combat, but it's intriguing enough. Initially the game can feel overwhelming, but once you learn what to automate and what not, and what each option does, it becomes more enjoyable. The first few attempts, I was severaly annoyed by fleet automation and bottlenecks. I also colonised either too fast or too slow. Turning off autofunding was perhaps the biggest factor towards success. Once you know what needs to be done you can anticipate and progress alot quicker, to the point that in my current playthrough I had several colonies and more than twice the fleet when I first met the most agressive race who had just one colony. I think this game might even dethrone SW:Empire at War (with AotR mod) as my favourite top-down rt4x (I know some people consider SW:EaW an RTS, but the Galaxy map plays like an rt4x). It also has this "spread scarce resources over different fronts" feel (though perhaps to a lesser extent than SWEaW). The only reasons I'm not sure, is because it lacks real ground combat and the ship battles are nowhere near being as engaging as those in SWEaW. Ofcourse the scale of the game and lack of instanced battles would make this hard. It is also referred to as "grand strategy", but I personally don't like that term (for any game). Positive aspects: - Real ships that can be part of a fleet aswell as operate individually, even while in a fleet (as long as you don't give a fleet order). - Has everything from corvettes ("Escorts") all the way to battleships and carriers. No skipping destroyers like SoaSE or cruisers like X4. - Real logistics: every transfer of resources happens through (civilian) ships. Even migration happens through passenger ships. Only the transfer of "hero" characters does not seem to use ships (or I didn't notice it). There is no teleportation of resources of any kind. - Both large scale fleet encounters aswell as single ship or small fleet encounters/pirate attacks. - Diplomacy with ambassadors, espionage with different option (steal tech, territory map, galaxy map, assasinate, destroy facility, incite rebellion). You can even wage proxywars. - Stories based on discoveries and sometimes research. Both good and bad: - The economy is done entirely by civilian ships, which you don't directly control. It is realistic, but sometimes annoying. You just take care of the infrastructure and can set supply goals and then just wait for them to fill it out. Mostly positive but has some issues. - You can automate different tasks to different degrees: fully automated, ai suggestions are executed unless you cancel, ai suggestions are not executed unless you confirm, or fully manual. Some things are only either manual or automated. This can also be changed for individual things like troop management or taxes on individual planets and for both each fleet and each invdividual ship. The automation is cool to some degree, but the AI makes weird suggestions at times, so for example fleet control is best not fully automated. Negative aspects: - Pathing is sometimes ridiculous, like flies right by destination but goes to another system first. - Fleets do not persist after every ship is killed, meaning you have to create a new one and therefore order in the list to add ships to a fleet changes, even if you rename it to the original. My OCD doesn't like this. - Ship (de)selection is a bit hard at times. You cannot (afaik) deselect an individual ship from the list of selected ships, but only by Ctrl clicking it in the gameworld. - the "Refuel from tankers" command doesn't always work, so sometimes in the middle of a war you notice a fleet gets stranded and you have to manually click all 28 or more warships in a fleet to refuel them. - If you keep autoupdate on for civilian ships they will all want to update their design when e.g. a new engine is researched. That's not bad if you have a handful and are at peace, but if you have over 400 sitting at your capital during wartime, that sucks. It causes shortages everywhere. Sure there are ways to avoid this, but they require micromanagement: manually redesigning civilians ships every so often and/or researching it only when peace and not planning to construct government ships. - Unlike Stellaris the game distinguishes between independant colonies and empires. So you cannot just observe or aid a colony to become a spacefaring empire. You can however by first conquering them and then granting them independance though. - No hold fire order, which means ships often kill targets you try to capture. (or I don't know how it's done) - No hold position, though you can change settings to approximate this (engagement range), a single button would be nicer. - Diplomacy lacks some aspects that I would like the ability to trade/exchange worlds at any time. Also once you vassalise someone you cannot just upgrade them to ally, without breaking other agreements first. There's also no option for immediate counteroffers, like in Supreme Ruler. - It has a "show location" button under messages about construction, but not for attack suggestions. The location of the potential target does blink when you zoom out and hover over the message, but it's annoying. If you just accept without checking it could mean you send a 2k power fleet to attack a 10k fleet or group of spacemonsters. - This might be silly to most of you, but the use of the name dreadnaught for the heaviest battleship bothers me. Dreadnaughts were just a type of battleship and the name was only used for like 20 years and only because the first battleship of this type was HMS Dreadnaught. It's like calling a pen a bic (well maybe not as that's a brand).The strongest destroyers are called fleet destroyers. So I would have preferred fleet battleship or just have it stop at heavy battleship. Or perhaps just a single version of every ship type. Which brings me to the next issue. - Maybe there are too many hull types: cruiser, light cruiser, exploration cruiser, fast cruiser, long range cruiser, heavy cruiser. Some are even the same size, but just have a different number of max slots you can use... So this cruiser hull which is the exact same size as this other cruiser hull, has the exact same amount of hardpoint and system spots, but I can't use them just because it has a different name ... I feel like just light, regular and heavy would be enough. Then equipping them differently based on needs would make them exploration or whatever. More fuel, more guns or more armour or shielding. That's basically what you're already doings atm, but with artificial limits per hull and a large number of hulls types unnecessarily filling up the construction menu. Conclusion: Overall I like the game alot, but it does lack some options mostly for ship control and diplomacy. Distributing scarce resources over multiple fronts with a sense of urgency, real logistics and real battles imho make this game superior to titles like Stellaris and Crusader kings.Different people might have different priorities. As said earlier, not sure if it's my favourite top down rt4x yet, but it certainly is my favourite one without 3D land combat atm. I hope someone makes a game like this with ground combat. There's one coming (Beyond Astra), but we'll see if the ground combat will be well implemented. Then also make it first person and perhaps MP and you got a new iteration of the game of my dreams.

good . worth buy on sale .

Game shows a lot of potential, even though i've played only 20 minutes(lol) i can see already how great this game could be if only you're hardcore enough. Unfortunately UI is so hardcore that I'm not hardcore enough to play it further :( I really wish there was neutral recommendation. If you're really into Space-sim 4x games and learning a new ui/game/systems isn't scary for you go for it. I can bet you'll sink for hundreds of hours. On the opposite site, if graphics matter to you and a good UI is a must, try, skip or wait long enough for UI to get better.

J'aime bien les jeux vidéos se déroulant dans l'espace. Et DW2 avec ses 2000 étoiles est excellent pour moi. Je trouve que l'IA c'est améliore depuis la sortie du jeu . On peut jouer avec ou sans conditions de jeu pour que la race choisit s'étend au détriment ou non des autres races. Surtout on peut jouer tout manuel ou tout automatiser , ou alors faire manuellement les catégories qu'on voudrait faire nous même. Et puis avec les races anciennes mis au gout du jour et les nouvelles races et les dlc , ce jeux n'en seras que plus passionnant et prenant.

Ich habe dieses Spiel lediglich für ein paar Euro erworben, muss jedoch leider sagen, dass ich es für den Vollpreis auch ernsthaft bereut hätte. Das Spiel an für sich genommen macht schon Spaß und lädt zum experimentieren ein. Leider hat das Spiel auch sehr viele Schwächen, vor allem für ein Titel aus 2024/25 (weiß nicht genau mehr wann der Release war). Unter anderem: *Das Spiel wird immer langsamer und anfälliger für Abstürze je länger man spielt *Leider sind generell die Abstürze ein großes Problem *Ist ist nach einiger Zeit recht repetitiv *Die Grafik und das generelle Design und Game-Feature's sind nicht mehr zeitgemäß! *Der Anfang des Spiels ist sehr holprig und in keinster Weise irgendwie erklärend, zudem hat man das Gefühl, dass am Anfang so gut wie gar nichts passiert, da man irgendwie kein Feedback bekommt, was man da eigentlich tut. *Das Spiel ist komplett auf englischer Sprache und diese ist nicht ohne externe Mod änderbar! Zu guter Letzt möchte ich jedoch noch den Game Editor, welcher sich wie bei alten Civilization-Spielen mitten im Spiel ausführen lies lobend hervorheben. In einem Sandbox-Game wie diesem würde ich mir dieses Feature auch in anderen Games öfters wünschen. Abschließend kann ich sagen, für ein paar Euro ist es eine gute Investition und für Fans von Strategie und Aufbauspielen im Weltraum sowieso. Allen anderen würde ich raten wirklich zu warten, bis das Game im Sell ist, der Vollpreis lohnt sich meines Erachtens nach nicht!

A little rough around the edges, but probably the best space simulator out there

Highly recommended