This is "Distant Worlds rebuilt from the ground up," says co-designer Erik Rutkins Strategy games set in space are almost innately ambitious. The very concept of doing anything meaningful in an infinite void, let alone making it playable and entertaining, is a challenging one, and for every game that reaches for the stars there are countless kinds of... spiraling chaos orbitals. Between its design flaws and unique ideas with semi-brilliant execution, the 2010 4X/wargame/economic/management simulation Distant Worlds: Universe has straddled those two experiences for a decade. It's needed a sequel for a long time. Distant Worlds 2 is that sequel, and it's almost upon us. Last week I attended a live demo and Q&A session with its producer and co-designer Erik Rutkins. With only a hands-off demo to go on I obviously can't say for sure how it plays yet, but it's already looking very promising. What's immediately clear was that, as a bare minimum, the UI is already vastly improved. DWU was complicated even by strategy game standards, and important functions and information were buried all over the place in obscure, full-screen menus. 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. It's fairly standard stuff in 2022, and the influence of Stellaris in particular is clear. But Distant Worlds was in sore need of a total presentation overhaul and Code Force have definitely prioritised clarity and ease of use. Pretty much every element Rutkins demonstrates comes up with a summary of "top level" information with a click or two in a logical place. This isn't just window dressing either. Rutkins tells us immediately that "this is a 64-bit, multi-threaded 3D engine. It's a whole new code base... 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. The old engine was beyond creaking at the seams." 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. Delegating tasks to the AI remains fundamental to the design, and Rutkins stresses the importance of supporting a wide range of playstyles. 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. 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. Each department can be further finetuned through 'policy settings' from within the same menu, essentially leaving specific standing orders for AI behaviour. Personally, getting the right degree of control without either constant messages or no idea what my ships were doing was always the first big hurdle with starting a DWU game. I'm hoping this approach will remedy those early stumbling blocks. This attitude extends to diplomacy, too. Code Force's new policy layer only lets you make the big diplomatic decisions, and then gives your advisors broad instructions and "control at a somewhat higher level what your strategy will be". Here, he shows us that his diplomats are instructed to 'undermine' a neighbouring faction without him having to think up passive aggressive remarks himself. The list of playable factions has been cut from 20 to seven "because each faction frankly is a huge amount more work than it was in Distant Worlds". It's a small disappointment, but should still allow wide range of playstyles, and the remaining species will be available as independents who provide bonuses if conquered or peacefully assimilated. From the sound of it, those factions are closer to Alpha Centauri than Stellaris, setting a loose archetype that you can bend, but not fundamentally change beyond a different government type. There are more factors affecting foreign relations, and new treaty types, the most interesting being multiple trade agreements. Initially, empires won't trade with you at all, but may sign a series of treaties to share increasingly favourable economic terms. When I ask, Rutkins indicates that although it would depend on circumstance and good relations and treaties, it should be possible to trade extensively rather than mine everything yourself. Inevitably, I asked whether I could be a pirate faction. The answer is no, for now, but "we really want them to the playable again in the future". Reading between the lines, it's almost certainly a question that will be answered by how well the game sells. DWU's pirate mode was a fundamental structural change, and asking for that out of the box is a lot, especially for such a small studio. But there will still be AI pirates to fight and bargain with. They're even integrated with the (optional) storyline, which Rutkins says will offer "way more story than the first game." He continues: "We have the main story, which is equivalent to the first, and a story for each faction. You really only get all the pieces of the entire narrative if you play through each faction." Less completionist players might still piece together what they miss with one faction though, as "we try to put everything in the galaxy at the beginning, and make you have to find it. But the order that you find it, and what happens, is up to you." This is true of the main and faction stories; any faction can find parts of any other's story, but may be less able to understand their significance. Much of the new design is about refinement and better integration. Much of the new design is about refinement and better integration, like the new ability to set immigration policy on a per-planet basis rather than just empire-wide, and the same is true for resource storage policies. Civilian transports will manage deliveries and stock levels as before, but you can alter their priorities to stockpile or clear out any given resource from any planet or station. Also like DWU, everything in your economy is physically present on the map, with every ship made from materials mined and shipped from place to place. Each ship needs fuel too, although this time there's just the one fuel type, which I'm mildly disappointed by, but is probably a better design decision. Planetary populations, meanwhile, demand luxury resources to keep growing. Larger colonies pay more tax, but require ever more goods, which is still key to how DW2's economy works. The private sector will mine and transport those goods, but only as effectively as your state infrastructure permits. Growth and construction and research flourish when your mining and hauling network is well managed and protected, but poor planning, disruption from war and other disasters dampen that movement and those processes. Building, colonisation, and fleet building and formation all have one-click purchase orders added in easily-accessed places, and your full build order can be viewed at a glance and rejigged with minimal fuss. Exploration ships have new, more nuanced AI settings to differentiate between basic exploration, prospecting, and spying. Even civilian transports show up on one menu tab, complete with their cargo or passenger manifest and a wee line on the map showing their flight plan. One of many details that experienced players will recognise as a potentially huge problem solver is the replacement of fiddly and unreliable supply ships with fuel tankers. These too can be supervised and manipulated from an accessible list, but more crucially will now seek out and deliver fuel directly to fleets, keeping them from abandoning their posts to fly back to a fuel source. At one point, Rutkins even says my holy word: "salvage". In addition to the