Galaxy brain
I still don’t know where to start.
Distant Worlds 2is enormous.
But in thespiritof the ancient ones, I can share a review-in-progress of what I’ve seen so far.
Partly it’s because it’s a long game.
But it’s also because Ireallywant to keep playing.
In the gamest terms, DW2 is a 4X, then.
Without it, you might’t build anything that uses osalia stone.
Those traders are the second crucial thing.
That leads into a third crucial thing: delegation.
All this was true of the originalDistant Worlds, of course.
And its sequel is not revolutionary, considering how much of it was already there.
But it didn’t need to be.
That latter point ties into a better and more nuanced degree of control over automation.
It’s all very esoteric.
Planetary management is less prone to haemorrhaging your money.
Pirates are no longer absolutely crippling whether you fight or pay them off.
There’s still abitof that AI friction, though, I have to mention.
Attacking ships will sometimes charge into a fight without waiting for the rest of their fleetmates.
Newbuilt ships added to a distant fleet don’t seem to physically join that fleet unless prompted.
But some of this is symptomatic of my failure to lean on the automation enough.
You’re the queen of space making decisions that ripple outwards, not the author choosing every word.
In DW2, you’re the brain, not the whole.
A little leak here, a troubling lump there.
It becomes about nurturing and managing a thing that has life of its own.
an innately foolish idea.
But I can’t let it off the hook entirely.
Its interface improvements are only improvements on a pretty dire system, not perfection.
More disappointingly, the pirates seem to be quite heavily abstracted, and largely invisible.
But I alreadywantto spend that time.
