Each department can be further finetuned through 'policy settings' from within the same menu, essentially leaving specific standing orders for AI behaviour. In between full automation and maximum micromanagement mode, many departments of your empire can be entrusted to advisors whose authority level is up to you - you might have them form the plans for your approval, or let them do what they want but occasionally send notice of decisions should you want to veto them. Players uninterested in any aspect of running an empire can hand it to the AI, even so far as controlling only a single ship for themselves. Delegating tasks to the AI remains fundamental to the design, and Rutins stresses the importance of supporting a wide range of playstyles. Given that Distant Worlds already boasted tens of thousands of planets per game, that's a lot to manage, bringing us to the second area that badly needed improvements: the automation. The old engine was beyond creaking at the seams." basically Distant Worlds rebuilt from the ground up." Players of the original will be relieved to hear that Distant Worlds 2 is based on "a newer engine that allows us to do bigger galaxies and 3D graphics, and not be constrained as much performance-wise. Rutins tells us immediately that "this is a 64-bit, multi-threaded 3D engine. Pretty much every element Rutins demonstrates comes up with a summary of "top level" information with a click or two in a logical place. But Distant Worlds was in sore need of a total presentation overhaul and Code Force have definitely prioritised clarity and ease of use. It's fairly standard stuff in 2022, and the influence of Stellaris in particular is clear. This sequel is instead built around a straightforward tabbed menu panel, integrated with the map so that hovering on an item pings the corresponding map location. DWU was complicated even by strategy game standards, and important functions and information were buried all over the place in obscure, full-screen menus. What's immediately clear was that, as a bare minimum, the UI is already vastly improved.
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