Key Features

• Play as a Lone Pirate and begin with a single ship and rise toward pirate infamy to become a Legendary Lone Pirate or grow into a Pirate Faction.
• Periodically jump into your ship’s new cockpit or bridge view to experience the action from a unique first-person perspective.
• Play as a fully space-based Pirate Faction with much more control over a new economy based around mining and trade, smuggling, raiding, privateering, espionage, influence and corruption and contracts of all kinds from different sources.
• Grow strong enough and you may transition from a fully space-based Pirate faction into a new Pirate Empire with its own unique government type — or remain space-based and become a Legendary Pirate Faction.
• Experience the new “Age of Shadows” starting era, where pirates must survive against increased threats from the Hive and build up as independent colonies look to become the first full space-faring empires that will challenge your dominance of the galaxy.
• Four distinct playstyles are available: the jack-of-all trades Pirate, the chaotic and aggressive Raider, the trading-focused Smuggler, or the combat and privateering-focused Mercenary.
• Complete contracts, raid planets or guard planets to fight off rival pirate factions to make sure your influence spreads unabated. Influence creates corruption and will covertly siphon off income and expand black market resource offerings for smuggling.
• Establish Hidden Pirate Bases and Pirate Fortresses to solidify your presence on key worlds. Upgrade a fortress into a Criminal Network to lay the foundation for your Pirate Empire or build the Legendary Anarchopolis.
• Undertake and compete for contracts across the galaxy that include resource deliveries, espionage missions including artifact theft and ransoming characters, and destroying assigned targets or fighting on the side of another faction.
• The powerful Shadowports act as neutral pirate-aligned hubs where pirate factions trade ships, technology, and rare equipment. They also offer contracts to support pirate efforts, especially to keep Independent worlds and planetary Empires under control and to counter the Hive.
• A new smuggling system allows contraband resources to be transported to buy and sell at premium prices.  There is risk involved, however, as smuggling operations may be discovered, which could result in the destruction of your ships and reduce your reputation with your trade partners.
• Discover expanded Independent Worlds with unique bonuses, artifacts, defenses, and which can now evolve into powerful new empires.
• Faction behavior can be customized with expanded pirate policy systems governing contracts, smuggling, influence, and fleet operations.
• As an Empire, experience new interactions and challenges with the fully developed Lone Pirates, Pirate Factions and Shadowports that now populate the galaxy.  Pirates can be opposed or hired through the new Contract system for Resources and Privateering which allows you to hire Pirates to fight your enemies for you.

 

The Galaxy lives on

What is this?

This is a dependency marker for ModLoader. It contains no code, assets, or gameplay changes and does nothing by itself. It does not install ModLoader.

Other mods can list it as a required dependency, so players see "depends on: ModLoader" and know what they need.

What can ModLoader do?

• Load DLL mods into the game
• One-button Workshop mod upload
• Load order control: the game already lets you do this in-game, but ModLoader lets you set the order before you launch

Installation

1. Download the latest release from GitHub
2. Extract .zip it anywhere you see fit (it can work from any folder on your machine)
3. Run DW2ModLauncher.exe

For DLL mod authors

It is advised that you mark your mod as dependent on this workshop item so that any user can easily find Mod Loader

Download

https://github.com/lucky-wolf/DW2-Mod-Launcher/releases

The Shadows Rising expansion for Distant Worlds 2 introduces a completely new game mode: Lone Pirate.

https://preview.redd.it/rl15bkc214nh1.png?width=3840&format=png&auto=webp&s=634eaba7251c6c64841104331941d634fc456cc9

You have a single ship, travelling the stars. You have no bases or other ships. You have the freedom to pursue any path you choose:

• Simple trading of in-demand resources across the galaxy
• Action-packed raiding and combat to loot and pillage, or to acquire new ships
• Stealthily perform contracts on behalf of others, hunting bounties, destroying targets or finding items

...or pursue any combination of the above areas as you forge your own path.

As a Lone Pirate you rely on Shadowports for repairs or upgrades to your ship.

You are able to refuel at any independent colony or friendly pirate base, including Shadowports.

You are a free agent, unencumbered by obligations, responsible only for yourself.

In time you may choose to grow and become a more established pirate faction, but that is up to you...

When you grow stronger you also have the option of becoming a Legendary Lone Pirate.

Differences with standard gameplay

Uniquely as a lone pirate you have no regular income or expenses. You simply earn money based on what you do. To pay for fuel, repairs, upgrades or even an entirely new ship, you must actively make money through various activities.

Some other activities that are typical for standard Distant Worlds gameplay are mostly absent from Lone Pirate gameplay:

• No research
• No ship design or construction except for upgrading or buying new ships at Shadowports
• No resource mining

Lone Pirate Playstyle

Similar to pirate factions, Lone pirates also have a playstyle that determines their starting ship, as well as their advantages.

https://preview.redd.it/fb364nj314nh1.png?width=1210&format=png&auto=webp&s=e58596323f8e0e96d175cd2dae9dd9c261d2ecad

Smuggler playstyle is probably the easiest for a lone pirate. It is a safer option, where most income is earned through resource trading. Other options like Raider and Bounty Hunter, have more of a military focus, where you’re encouraged to generate income from raiding or contracts to destroy dangerous threats.

Let’s take a closer look at two key ways that lone pirates earn income: Contracts and Trading Resources.

Contracts

Contracts provide a variety of options for making money. Each type of contract is often more suited to a particular lone pirate playstyle:

• Resource Delivery: best suited for Smugglers whose ships typically have more cargo space available. However, any lone pirate might do some occasional resource trading. Smugglers also have very high scan evasion, allowing them to better avoid detection when smuggling black market resources that can be bought cheaper than normal.
• Destroying Targets: best suited to lone pirates with strong military ships that can survive combat and take down serious threats.
• Acquiring Items: this includes intelligence missions to capture or rescue characters. It also includes stealing artifacts or finding lost items. Any lone pirate can undertake these contracts, but they are especially well-suited to spies and leaders with strong espionage and sabotage skills.

https://preview.redd.it/da89egg414nh1.png?width=1074&format=png&auto=webp&s=ab862bc39a8c97faa45e28356b7eeda2a614fb25

Trading Resources and Smuggling

Resource trading means buying and selling resources throughout the galaxy. Typically, you would buy resources at the lowest price you can find and then search for the destination that will pay the most to buy the resource.

https://preview.redd.it/ts5gc3h514nh1.png?width=574&format=png&auto=webp&s=7a5fe0f96187a64dcb95d1dc5f657d7374d1d6d6

You must also consider distance between the source and destination. Obviously closer locations allow you to earn money more quickly. In addition, each location will have a limit to how much of a resource they are willing to buy. This limit may often be zero, i.e. the location will not buy any of that resource.

To view trading locations, you can use the Trading Points screen. This will show you a distance-sorted list of places where you can buy and sell resources. For each location you can click the button at the right to show the resource amounts and prices, as well as the buy limit for the resource.

Filtering the Trading Points list by a specific resource will show the amounts, prices and limits directly in the Trading Points list.

https://preview.redd.it/gd9vxx0714nh1.png?width=731&format=png&auto=webp&s=d7a49e7864764b1e64959687d8c95e0dcf3b175b

Pirates can also choose to smuggle contraband resources from the Black Market. Colonies that are influenced by pirate factions generate contraband resources that are available to buy at a much lower price than normal.

However, smuggling contraband resources is risky – if you are detected then you will be attacked as a smuggler.

Other factions can detect smugglers by having good Trace Scanners on their ships. Pirates can prevent detection of smuggled resources by having good Scanner Jamming on their ships, and by keeping their distance from potential scanners (Trace Scanner detection power declines with range).

Smuggling offers the possibility for greater rewards but also adds some risk of losing your ship.

Focused User Interface

Lone pirates use a cut-down user interface with less sections, allowing them to more easily focus on the activities critical to them. This includes areas like exploration, diplomacy, contracts and resource trading.

The header bar at the top of the main view also shows important information for you as a Lone Pirate: a quick link to your own ship, and quick links to all known Shadowports.

https://preview.redd.it/ovmhjbo814nh1.png?width=574&format=png&auto=webp&s=701daef4d98c6868fad2b8b97af62c8c7a2c486a

When playing as a lone pirate, with only one ship, some of the user interface buttons can also use implied behavior.

For example, there is often no need to select your ship to assign missions. Instead you just click the action buttons under the Selected Item to move, dock, attack, etc.

Similarly clicking the ‘Move and Dock’ button in the Trading Points list allows you to immediately assign a Dock mission to your ship without needing to first select it.

Shadowports

https://preview.redd.it/0mc6aw8914nh1.png?width=1728&format=png&auto=webp&s=f543b273a902c06e54b2520e51a1a622df07de49

Shadowports are important bases for lone pirates that provide critical services.

https://preview.redd.it/y37lcbka14nh1.png?width=425&format=png&auto=webp&s=c789b5271750944ecd8ac94c1819e4d25e607d33

At Shadowports you can refuel and repair your ship.

You can also upgrade your ship with new components or specialized equipment.

https://preview.redd.it/cbe24wfb14nh1.png?width=1214&format=png&auto=webp&s=c018b97168be4a9f6d83e4b27b98e7276858487f

You can even browse and buy a completely new ship, better equipped to survive the dangerous life of a lone pirate.

https://preview.redd.it/7c44hcec14nh1.png?width=1211&format=png&auto=webp&s=e832ce93b8eb754e0c059fb64d12fc83b47c2029

Shadowports have a supply of many resources, providing opportunities for trade.

https://preview.redd.it/5grma75d14nh1.png?width=362&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a3abb58e35c425f895b4c4996dd332dd0080ecf

They also have their own private communications network known as the ShadowNet that provides special contracts, not available otherwise, that are directly offered to pirates. These contracts often involve finding a lost item or destroying a great threat.

Special Missions

Pirate characters can also carry out special missions at foreign colonies and bases. These special missions include the following:

• Assassinating a character
• Capturing a character
• Rescuing an imprisoned character
• Stealing an artifact
• Destroying a facility

To carry out these missions, the character requires the relevant skill, like Espionage or Sabotage. You can even include a team of multiple characters, though their skills will stack in a diminishing manner.

Lone Pirates typically have a Spy character that can help them with these types of special missions. In addition, their Leader character will often also have espionage skills.

https://preview.redd.it/g6gl60ae14nh1.png?width=1298&format=png&auto=webp&s=d22a37d9ef261da0e667abb67fcfd4d1bf7197bd

To initiate the special mission you must select your ship with the character or team onboard. Your ship must be nearby the target colony or base. Then right-click on the target for a pop-up list of options. If there are any special missions available they will appear at the bottom of the list. Click the desired special mission to initiate it.

The characters onboard the ship will then travel to the target and carry out the mission. The mission progress will be shown in a small panel to the right of the Selection Panel.

https://preview.redd.it/pat68o9f14nh1.png?width=539&format=png&auto=webp&s=aae35c55dbe45714e1c756ec86ea6a6fac239b19

If the mission succeeds then the target objective is achieved, and any items are added to the ship (characters, artifacts, etc). If the mission fails then the characters will simply return to the ship. However, there is always a risk of a complete mission failure where the characters are captured.

Special missions often parallel intelligence missions, but they are easier to achieve, especially when combining a team of characters.

Cockpit mode

A new feature in Shadows Rising is the option for pirates to operate their ships from the cockpit or bridge view. This view puts you ‘in the driver's seat,’ allowing you to control your ship directly using either a game pad or the keyboard.

The rest of the DW2 user interface remains available in this view, allowing you to trade resources, plan routes and examine available contracts all from your cockpit.

https://preview.redd.it/fx9lizuf14nh1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=d534cd16fa6bc0edb3eb5b2c3eb6a01acbb7d6c9

In the cockpit itself there is a panel at the bottom-right showing the current status of your ship, similar to the Selection Panel on the left. There are also targeting and selection brackets with hotkeys that allow you to quickly cycle through all items and enemy targets at the current location.

Cockpit mode offers an interesting difference in how you play the game, and is especially well-matched with Lone Pirate gameplay.

https://preview.redd.it/mmbykbgg14nh1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=da186c89fc5e36fc8cef5d47242c4083b2a1b3f8

Lone Pirate Victory Conditions

Lone Pirates do not have victory conditions that can end the game. Instead, their goal is to grow large enough to build a pirate base and become a pirate faction. Alternatively, they can grow strong enough to become a Legendary Lone Pirate.

However, the Victory Conditions screen shows the relative progress of all known Lone Pirates in various areas enabling you to compare yourself to others.

Regularly upgrading your ship is important as a Lone Pirate. As you earn enough money you should visit Shadowports to get better components and equipment. You should also buy larger ship hulls, eventually reaching Destroyer hulls. This will enable you to take on more dangerous and lucrative contracts and missions. You will need a strong and capable ship (and plenty of money) to become a Legendary Lone Pirate (see below).

Moving from a Lone Pirate to a Pirate Faction

In time you may decide that being a Lone Pirate is not your goal.  If you accumulate a vast amount of credits, you can pay a Shadowport for a one-time construction contract.  A Construction ship from a nearby Shadowport will build a new Spaceport for you at a location of your choice. Your play experience will then change from Lone Pirate to Pirate Faction once that Spaceport is completed.

Henceforth, you will be competing with other Pirate Factions in terms of your Victory Conditions rather than against other Lone Pirates.

https://preview.redd.it/gcf5cw5h14nh1.png?width=762&format=png&auto=webp&s=5cd269ce680946ad892e1c910b7dcbebef438106

Becoming a Legendary Lone Pirate

If you are successful enough as a Lone Pirate, you may earn the hostility of other envious pirate factions who see you as a threat. This can lead to them sending a Bounty Hunter after you to destroy you.

https://preview.redd.it/rt9blkbi14nh1.png?width=461&format=png&auto=webp&s=b45d876986635726723b53c665e6ec5f727950bc

If you defeat the Bounty Hunter you will earn the status of Legendary Lone Pirate. This auto-switches you to the Legendary Lone Pirate government style, which combines all of the advantages of the different styles of lone piracy (Pirates, Smugglers, Raiders, Mercenaries) into a single form of government.

As a Legendary Lone Pirate, you will then have access to Cruiser and Large Freighter ship hulls at Shadowports, allowing you to upgrade your ship even further.

Conclusion

Tapping into the deep mechanics of Distant Worlds opens up detailed gameplay at the level of a single ship, whether that involves resources, contracts, exploration or special missions.

Lone Piracy provides a challenging and active new mode of play in Distant Worlds. Charting your path across the stars in a single ship, a free agent, unencumbered by obligations, forging your own path.

https://preview.redd.it/vygm0xy1ujch1.png?width=1119&format=png&auto=webp&s=53fd42d2d0f3ace12d3a79f89ea4238393fb9de5

Welcome back, explorers.

We’re pleased to announce that a major update for Distant Worlds 2 is coming on July 22: the Command Update. This is a significant update designed to refresh and improve the gameplay experience with targeted changes to key areas of the game.

On July 14, 16:00 - 18:00 GMT+2, our Associate Producer on the game, Maxim Klose-Ivanov, will showcase the new update. Save the date

What’s included in the Command Update:

- New Content: Hive Ship Models

https://preview.redd.it/78rwux8se7ch1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=3b52db1abc912ae2a6277ab0358d4543e38b2dee

- Players will encounter new Hive ships spread across the galaxy

- New Feature: Empire Contracts

- Factions within empires, as well as independent colonies, will now periodically offer contracts to the player.

- UI/UX Improvements:

- Empire flags now appear on claimed systems, improving galaxy readability

- A slew of fixes, changes, and additions to improve manual play

- Gameplay Improvements:

- Independent colonies have had their population growth tweaked and can now potentially form new empires

- Known debris now appears in the exploration screen and a new mission type for ships and fleets makes salvaging easier

- Some espionage missions have been rebalanced and tweaked to address certain exploits

- Bug Fixing and Stability Improvements

1. CRASH FIXES GALAXY MAP EMPIRE CONTRACTS SHIP BEHAVIOR
   • fixed some rare crashes
   • fixed rare crash when rendering weapon billboards
   • fixed rare crash when displaying Ground Battle report while invading colony (when enemy General lands before troops)
   • fixed rare crash when showing Start New Game screen
   • added empire flags in the territory rendering for both standard planetary empires and pirate factions
   • We’ve added a new feature for empires – now various factions within your empire will start offering missions to complete for a reward. Some of these missions and contracts can include researching techs, building bases, obtaining artifacts, garrisoning key planets, and many more. Accepted contracts will appear on the status bar, similar to war missions during wars. Note these contracts will have expiration dates. If you’re unable to complete the missions within the allotted time, they mission will fail and you will not receive any reward. We also added a new automation policy that cover these new missions.
   • rebalanced ship maneuvering so that larger ships are slower to turn, also slower to accelerate
   • fixed bug where jumping ships can sometimes get stuck in hyperspace as they reach their destination
2. COMBAT CONSTRUCTION GOVERNMENT POLICIES
   • fixed Assault Pods sometimes mistakenly being fired at secondary targets of opportunity while pursuing main target
   • slightly altered determination for when a base build location is beyond construction ship fuel range. Now locations in the same system as the resource pickup spaceport (e.g. prewarp home system) do not apply additional range checks that consider refuel location after construction (which is sometimes quite distant and thus makes the build location out of range)
   • added summary messages after change government, explaining what happened: new government, losses of population and development at colonies, any colonies that left our empire, new leader
   • added extra explanation for Ship Construction and Fleet Ship Management automation settings in Policy screen (both must be manual to avoid any state ship auto-construction)
3. SHIP DESIGN SHIP GRAPHICS PLANETARY FACILITIES EVENTS Id2 = -1 means incident relates to triggering empire Id1 indicates which groups of empires/colonies that the incident is added to: -1 = all standard empires (default) 0 = all standard empires, pirate empires and independent colonies 1 = all pirate empires 2 = all independent colonies 3 = all standard empires and pirate empires 4 = all standard empires and independent colonies 5 = all pirate empires and independent colonies
   • fixed bug where hull bonuses could often be applied repeatedly when editing a ship design
   • fixed missing cargo drones when loading/unloading at independent colonies
   • fixed running lights for Human ship and base models
   • added a number of fixes to various ship and base models of various factions, including Zenox, Mortalen, Atuuk, and Quameno
   • fixed multiple levels of Planetary Bastion facility able to be built at colonies (requires new game)
   • added new AddEmpireIncidentFactorGeneralGroup GameEventActionType, which allows adding a diplomatic incident value to multiple empires/independent colonies that the triggering empire has met. Values are as follows:
   • GenerateAbandonedShip game event action now avoids damaging Ion Defense or Armor components when generating abandoned ships and bases so that they will not be damaged and destroyed in nebula storms
4. INDEPENDENT COLONIES ESPIONAGE HIVE PIRATES CAMERA
   • ensure independent colonies heal damaged troops
   • allow independent colony populations to grow much larger than previously
   • increased difficulty of intelligence missions against independent colonies
   • fixed missing notification message when character of your empire is persuaded to defect to another empire, and mission is successful, but you do not detect the foreign spy
   • added new Hive ship variants: new Cruisers and additional Frigates and Destroyers
   • added some more pirate flags to reduce double-ups
   • pirate ships and fleets now more careful to avoid assigning raids against colonies where have treaties that should preclude this (Neutral, Protection, NonAggression)
   • ensure pirates do not raid standard empire targets (colonies, bases) until they have grown a bit
   • slightly increased pirate raid threshold when targeting standard empires (i.e. will raid a bit later than before)
   • improved switch to free-form camera mode so that less chance of faulty camera near/far values