SplatterCatGaming checked out Drox Operative 2:

Drox Operative 2 - Procedural Space Mercenary Action RPG

loading...

Drox Operative 2 gameplay with Splat! Let's Play Drox Operative 2 and check out a game where you'll take an op pilot into parts unknown while choosing sides and wiping out the enemies of your faction.

The starship action RPG Drox Operative 2 has left Early Access:

Drox Operative 2

Drox Operative 2 is a starship action RPG with warring alien races, fierce space battles, a dynamic, evolving galaxy, and co-op multiplayer for Windows and Linux.

Eons ago the Drox crushed and enslaved the ancient races and ruled the galaxy through their mighty Operatives. These elite starship captains were trained to accomplish the impossible at whatever cost. Whether employing stealth or brute force, they were always deadly. Using these Operatives, the Drox ruled the galaxy with an iron grip for over 100,000 years. Eventually realizing their Operatives were a threat, they attempted to assassinate all of them. They failed. The following Galactic Civil War was so devastating that the Drox are now extinct. The Drox Operative guild, now fully independent, survived.

Newer races emerged and thrived in the power void ... for a while. Then the ancients returned. The wars were devastating, but with the Drox Operatives on their side, the ancients were beaten back and a truce was established.

Since the devastation, a 4th wave of sentient races are emerging in the galaxy. Unlike previous waves, there are thousands in this one and no one knows anything about them. In the new space race, the ancient, mature, and young races are all scouting, colonizing, and expanding, trying to take over the galaxy through diplomacy, technology, war, and any other means necessary.

As a Drox Operative it's NOT your job to manage an empire, you are after all the captain of a single starship. It IS your job to pick the winning side and maybe even help them conquer the galaxy if you're being nice, more importantly though is to rake in as many credits as possible, well that and build the deadliest ship in the known universe. Who will you back as an Operative? The ancient, mature, or young races? The pacifist or militaristic races? The xenophile or xenophobe races? The races that value freedom or the races that use slave labor? The strong or the weak? Your actions and inactions will impact trillions of alien lives!

Features

• Explore a dynamic and evolving galaxy
• Explore a unique sector of the galaxy in every game, with different "monsters", ship components, quests, and even races
• Fight in the galactic war between the various alien races
• Battle hundreds of different enemy starships
• Build the coolest and deadliest starship in the galaxy
• Outfit your ship with thousands of components and crew
• Adventure with your friends with co-op multiplayer
• Essentially play an action RPG inside a universe of alien races playing a 4X game

New Features (compared to Drox Operative 1)

• Build a unique ship with a new skill/command system
• Enjoy better graphics (normal maps, better specular maps, and higher resolution textures)
• Enjoy new combat sound effects
• Deal with more treaty types (vassals, tributaries, protectorates, and federations)
• Find more component types (plasma cannons, ramming components, probes, ballistic bursts, plasma blasts, manual beams, chaining beams, plasma waves, etc)
• Experience faster movement and combat
• Interact with randomly generated races (just the young races)
• Discover way more interesting things while exploring
• Protect or exploit primitive races
• Find crew with skills
• Place spies on planets for better info and spying activities
• Access much more information on the 4X aspects
• Play as the rebels of each of the races (42 total known playable races, rebels, and subraces)
• Play as any of the unlocked young races (essentially infinite number of random playable races)
• Win sectors with the new Guild Win
• Survive Cataclysms, massive sector wide events that can greatly change the balance of power
• Play with better controller support
• Use new tools to deal with the various races in your sector (sponsor diplomatic and colony ships, vouch for races, and adventure with races)

Soldak Entertainment contacted us to announce they had a demo for Drox Operative 2.

Anna, Texas, October 14, 2021 - Soldak Entertainment today announced the availability of the Drox Operative 2 demo. Drox Operative 2 is a starship action RPG with warring alien races, fierce space battles, a dynamic, evolving galaxy, and co-op multiplayer for Windows and Linux.

The demo for Drox Operative 2 is only around 810MB, so there's no reason not to give it a try. Go download the demo now from:

http://www.soldak.com/Drox-Operative-2/Demo.html
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1305310/Drox_Operative_2/

Eons ago the Drox crushed and enslaved most of the ancient races and ruled the galaxy through their mighty Operatives. These elite starship captains were trained to accomplish the impossible at whatever cost. Whether employing stealth or brute force, they were always deadly. Using these Operatives, the Drox ruled the galaxy with an iron grip for over 100,000 years. Eventually realizing their Operatives were a threat, they attempted to assassinate all of them. They failed. The following Galactic Civil War was so devastating that the Drox are now extinct. The Drox Operative guild, now fully independent, survived.

Newer races emerged and thrived in the power void ...for a while. Then the ancients returned. The wars were devastating, but with the Drox Operatives on their side, the ancients were beaten back and a truce was established.

Since the devastation, a 4th wave of sentient races are emerging in the galaxy. Unlike previous waves, there are thousands in this one and no one knows anything about them. In the new space race, the ancient, mature, and young races are all scouting, colonizing, and expanding, trying to take over the galaxy through diplomacy, technology, war, and any other means necessary.

As a Drox Operative it's NOT your job to manage an empire, you are after all the captain of a single starship. It IS your job to pick the winning side and maybe even help them conquer the galaxy if you're being nice, more importantly though is to rake in as many credits as possible, well that and build the deadliest ship in the known universe. Who will you back as an Operative? The ancient, mature, or young races? The pacifist or militaristic races? The xenophile or xenophobe races? The races that value freedom or the races that use slave labor? The strong or the weak? Your actions and inactions will impact trillions of alien lives!

Drox Operative 2 is scheduled to be released October 20th 2021. For more information about Drox Operative 2 head over to http://www.soldak.com/Drox-Operative-2/Overview.html

Features:

• Explore a dynamic and evolving galaxy
• Explore a unique sector of the galaxy in every game, with different "monsters", ship components, quests, and even races
• Fight in the galactic war between the various alien races
• Battle hundreds of different enemy starships
• Build the coolest and deadliest starship in the galaxy
• Outfit your ship with thousands of components and crew
• Adventure with your friends with co-op multiplayer
• Essentially play an action RPG inside a universe of alien races playing a 4X game

It is 15 months ago that Drox Operative 2 went in Early Access and new stuff has been added again.

Drox Operative 2 has now been in early access for over 15 months and is currently available on Steam and GOG.

As of this post, we've released 68 patches (8 since the last post) with 1,985 total changes (198 since the last post), which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

More playable races: Now random, young races that you have unlocked (emerged in the galaxy) are playable. The young races have random names, logos, story backgrounds, and skill trees so this greatly increases the options for new ships.

Race Relations: You can now vouch for a race (transferring some of your relations). You can also ask to adventure with a race that helps to form a bond between you and them, assuming it goes well. And finally, races actually care how you treat your crew.

Pirates/smugglers: Now pirates & smugglers can build starbases to cause more problems.

Storms: There are now geomagnetic storms and permanent versions of many of the storms.

Crew points: All of the crew attributes have been improved.

Bonus skills: All of the bonus skills you get from higher crew attribute levels are now each unique.

QOL improvements: There have been a bunch of quality of life improvements like increased regen rates when out of combat, increased ship base thrust, and a new auto scrapping system.

Art: And importantly from a progress standpoint, all of the required artwork is now completed and in the game.

 

That's it for all of the major new changes, but there are still a lot of potential changes coming up (which you can see here).

The lasted changes for Drox Operative 2 are listed here:

Drox Operative 2 early access month 13

Drox Operative 2 has now been in early access for over 13 months and is currently available on Steam and GOG.

Well so much for my original estimate of being in Early Access for only around 9 months. :)

As of this post, we've released 55 patches (13 since the last post) with 1,787 total changes (360 since the last post), which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

Random races: They now each have a cool description that explains their background a bit. The description basically explains why they are the way they are and adds some more details.

Spying: We've improved spying with counterespionage, laying low, jump gate activation stealing, and better sabotage.

Race Dialog: Now races speak differently based on their traits, so their dialog matches their personality much better.

Relation Changes: Race traits now impact relation changes quite a bit more. Militaristic races value kills more, Economist races value gifts more, etc. There is less backlash when you solve quests that aren't directly benefiting a specific race. Also, races now get tired of war faster and take their fear into account more.

Better Rewards: Now attributes given by command count towards bonus skills, there is an XP reward for scanning anomalies, and the XP curve has been flatten quite a bit.

Maps: The system map is now much better looking, much easier to read, and easier to use.

Monsters: We added new weapon types to many of the monsters and rebalanced them quite a bit.

Stability: And last but certainly not least, we've fixed a few crashes. One of these crashes was happening when scanning anomalies and planets and due to the randomness in the game it was quite difficult to track down. 

After being in Early Access for close to a year, Drox Operative 2 has reached the beta phase and is scheduled to be released in Q3.

Anna, Texas, May 25, 2021 - Drox Operative 2 is now in Beta!

Drox Operative 2 is nearing the end of Early Access after 48 patches of improvements and new content. It is now in beta and should be fully released in the 3rd quarter of 2021!

In the meantime, you can still pick it up and have some input in Early Access at Steam and GOG.

Drox Operative 2 is a starship action RPG with warring alien races, fierce space battles, a dynamic, evolving galaxy, and co-op multiplayer for Windows and Linux.

Eons ago the Drox crushed and enslaved the ancient races and ruled the galaxy through their mighty Operatives. These elite starship captains were trained to accomplish the impossible at whatever cost. Whether employing stealth or brute force, they were always deadly. Using these Operatives, the Drox ruled the galaxy with an iron grip for over 100,000 years. Eventually realizing their Operatives were a threat, they attempted to assassinate all of them. They failed. The following Galactic Civil War was so devastating that the Drox are now extinct. The Drox Operative guild, now fully independent, survived.

Newer races emerged and thrived in the power void ... for a while. Then the ancients returned. The wars were devastating, but with the Drox Operatives on their side, the ancients were beaten back and a truce was established.

Since the devastation, a 4th wave of sentient races are emerging in the galaxy. Unlike previous waves, there are thousands in this one and no one knows anything about them. In the new space race, the ancient, mature, and young races are all scouting, colonizing, and expanding, trying to take over the galaxy through diplomacy, technology, war, and any other means necessary.

As a Drox Operative it's NOT your job to manage an empire, you are after all the captain of a single starship. It IS your job to pick the winning side and maybe even help them conquer the galaxy if you're being nice, more importantly though is to rake in as many credits as possible, well that and build the deadliest ship in the known universe. Who will you back as an Operative? The ancient, mature, or young races? The pacifist or militaristic races? The xenophile or xenophobe races? The races that value freedom or the races that use slave labor? The strong or the weak? Your actions and inactions will impact trillions of alien lives!

For more information about Drox Operative 2 head over to the official site.

Features:

• Explore a dynamic and evolving galaxy
• Explore a unique sector of the galaxy in every game, with different "monsters", ship components, quests, and even races
• Fight in the galactic war between the various alien races
• Battle hundreds of different enemy starships
• Build the coolest and deadliest starship in the galaxy
• Outfit your ship with thousands of components and crew
• Adventure with your friends with co-op multiplayer
• Essentially play an action RPG inside a universe of alien races playing a 4X game

Drox Operative 2 has changed a lot over the last ten months:

Drox Operative 2 early access month 10

Drox Operative 2 has now been in early access for over 10 months and is currently available on Steam and GOG.

As of this post, we've released 42 patches (10 since the last post) with 1,427 total changes (176 since the last post), which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

Weapons: We added 5 new weapon types (ballistic burst, plasma blast, manual beam, chaining beam, and plasma wave), improved many of the old weapon types (fighters, bombs, missiles, and special weapons), race ships can also use the new weapon types, and now race ships and monsters can fire their weapons from much farther away.

Cataclysms: These are massive sector wide events that can greatly change the balance of power. Some examples: Harvesters, Fanatics, Singularity, and Creeping Death.

Icons: Our artists added more icons for skills, services, defensive ram components, and offensive ram components.

Better Diplomacy Options: You can now buy planet data from the races, there is an option to sponsor diplomat & colony ships, beacons now work for all races, and planting spies is cheaper.

Improved Radar: Radar now tracks planets, gates, and allies much better.

Win/Loss: Subject races no longer count for diplomatic wins, the death cost has been decreased so it's harder to get an economic loss, win conditions now have priority over lose conditions, and diplomatic win rewards are much better.

[...]

A new update for Drox Operative 2, brings us the following additions and changes:

Drox Operative 2 has now been in early access for over 7 months and is currently available on Steam and GOG.

As of this post, we've released 32 patches (6 since the last post) with 1,251 total changes (318 since the last post), which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

Skill Balance: Pretty much all of the player skills balance has been overhauled. Now the higher level skills are much more powerful then the lower level ones and race specific skills are a decent amount more powerful than the general skills.

Balance: Rebalanced a ton of different things like component crew requirements, legend points for a win, race ship defense, and higher difficulties.

Crew Skills: Now crew can have up to one of the player skills. So it is now possible to get access to other race skills for your ship.

Probes: Probes give the the player another way to explore space and planets.

That's it for all of the major new changes, but there are still a lot of potential changes coming up (which you can see here).

Drox Operative 2 is five month in Early Access - here are the news:

Drox Operative 2 early access month 5

Drox Operative 2 has now been in early access for a little over 5 months and is currently available on Steam and GOG.

As of this post, we've released 26 patches (7 since the last post) with 933 total changes (152 since the last post), which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

Spying: You can now plant spies on planets. This gives the player more ways to cause havoc and allows another way (other than treaties) to get information on what the races are up to.

Planet screen: There is now a planet screen that shows all of the information on planets that you have gathered through exploring, spying, or given through treaties.

Anomalies: There is now way more anomaly variety. There are also now anomalies that trigger when the player gets too close and many that give bonuses that last the rest of the sector.

Rebels: Rebels are now a playable option once they are unlocked and all of the rebel factions are more interesting and unique.

Better 4X info: The player now gets more info on race ship tasks & destinations, race production, and planet values.

Component protection: You now have more ways to protect components from damage. Components can no longer take damage if your structure is over 75% and components to the left and right on the layout will protect those in the middle some what.

That's it for all of the major new changes, but there are still a lot of potential changes coming up (which you can see here).

Drox Operative 2 is already 4 month in Early Access:

Drox Operative 2 early access month 4 

Drox Operative 2 has now been in early access for a little over 4 months and is currently available on Steam and GOG.

As of this post, we've released 19 patches (5 since the last post) with 781 total changes (201 since the last post), which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

Better UI: You can now scale the text and many of the menus in the game to work with your computer/monitor setup better or just your preference. There have also been a bunch of other quality of life changes added like component sorting, better menu pausing, and more message options.

Fighters: Fighters got a pretty decent overhaul. They are now stronger, faster to launch, have more variety in their damage types, and have more component modifiers that improve them. There was also a bunch of quality of life changes like showing their DPS and which fighter bays have fighters ready to go.

Unique playable ships: We made the playable ships even more unique. The race specific component slots got an overhaul making them more consistent. Subraces were also changed so that they have at least 1 different trait, skill tree, and race specific component than their parent race.

Better controller support: We made a ton of changes to how controllers work. We added a twin stick option where the 2nd stick automatically fires weapons which ever direction you point it. You can now use the dpad to move between UI elements. The left stick now more consistently lets you move things around (map, sliders, scrollbars, etc). And with the addition of a virtual keyboard, Drox 2 should be completely playable with a controller now.

That's it for all of the major new changes, but there are still a lot of potential changes coming up (which you can see here).

Drox Operative 2 is in Early Access for tree month now:

Drox Operative 2 Early Access Month 3

It has been my intention to do a monthly Drox 2 early access report. This first one is at about the 3 month mark, so I'm a bit behind. :)

Drox Operative 2 is currently available on Steam and GOG.

As of this post, we've released 14 patches with 579 total changes (which can be read here). This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

Skill system: The biggest change so far is probably the new skill/command system. Now instead of unlocking bigger ships and more slots with crew points in command, you unlock slots in the skill system. Each ship has 21 slot skills, 21 general skills, and 14 race specific skills available to put skills points into. The slot skills are basically the new way to get bigger ships and more slots. The general skills are available to all races, are generally weaker, but provide a little bit of everything. The race specific skills are what makes each race more unique and are usually the more powerful skills.

Weapon Grouping: You can now group weapons (or other components) so that when you press a mouse button or key for a use slot, up to 4 components can be fired/used instead of the usual 1.

Multiplayer: We have improved multiplayer connectivity and optimized traffic to make the multiplayer experience better.

Young races: We have had young races that have random portraits, icons, and traits since the start of early access, but now they are more interesting due to having random services and they can emerge into the galaxy. So even though they are random, if they do well, they can become a more persistent friend or foe.

Guild Win: Guild quests have come back similar to what was in Invasion of the Ancients though instead of being mandatory they are optional. However, you will now get a Guild Win if you complete enough of the guild guests.

Resurrection: After your ship has been destroyed, resurrection is now much safer. On resurrection, your ship's engines and thrusters are repaired and you get 10 seconds of immunity to make it a bit easier to get back on your feet.

Crew Points: In Drox 1, pretty much every ship had to put a lot of the their crew points into tactical. Now most of the weapon types have an alternate crew attribute that you can meet the installation requirements for. For example, you can install fighters if your helm is high enough or beam weapons if your computers are high enough.

Icons: And last, but definitely not least, we've added a ton of new icons for planet bonuses, random race portraits, military stances, outsider attitudes, social stratification, and race traits.

That's it for all of the major new changes, but there are still a lot of potential changes coming up (which you can see here). Hopefully I can start making a post like this each month.

Capsule Computers checked out the Early Access version of Drox Operative 2:

Drox Operative 2 Preview

loading...

Drox Operative 2 offers players a chance to be a mercenary in the middle of a 4X. The game is currently in alpha on Steam Early Access and GOG.

MogZone checked out the Early Access Space RPG Drox Operative 2:

Drox Operative 2 Preview

loading...

Drox Operative 2 has entered Early Access on Steam.

Anna, Texas, June 1, 2020 - Drox Operative 2 is now in Early Access on Steam!

Gamers who buy Drox Operative 2 Early Access will receive full access to the latest alpha build, a reduced price of only $14.99 (10% off first week), the opportunity to give Soldak feedback which can influence the game, and of course, the final version when it becomes available.

Drox Operative 2 is a starship action RPG with warring alien races, fierce space battles, a dynamic, evolving galaxy, and co-op multiplayer for Windows and Linux.

Eons ago the Drox crushed and enslaved the ancient races and ruled the galaxy through their mighty Operatives. These elite starship captains were trained to accomplish the impossible at whatever cost. Whether employing stealth or brute force, they were always deadly. Using these Operatives, the Drox ruled the galaxy with an iron grip for over 100,000 years. Eventually realizing their Operatives were a threat, they attempted to assassinate all of them. They failed. The following Galactic Civil War was so devastating that the Drox are now extinct. The Drox Operative guild, now fully independent, survived.

Newer races emerged and thrived in the power void ... for a while. Then the ancients returned. The wars were devastating, but with the Drox Operatives on their side, the ancients were beaten back and a truce was established.

Since the devastation, a 4th wave of sentient races are emerging in the galaxy. Unlike previous waves, there are thousands in this one and no one knows anything about them. In the new space race, the ancient, mature, and young races are all scouting, colonizing, and expanding, trying to take over the galaxy through diplomacy, technology, war, and any other means necessary.

As a Drox Operative it's NOT your job to manage an empire, you are after all the captain of a single starship. It IS your job to pick the winning side and maybe even help them conquer the galaxy if you're being nice, more importantly though is to rake in as many credits as possible, well that and build the deadliest ship in the known universe. Who will you back as an Operative? The ancient, mature, or young races? The pacifist or militaristic races? The xenophile or xenophobe races? The races that value freedom or the races that use slave labor? The strong or the weak? Your actions and inactions will impact trillions of alien lives!

Features:

* Explore a dynamic and evolving galaxy
* Explore a unique sector of the galaxy in every game, with different "monsters", ship components, quests, and even races
* Fight in the galactic war between the various alien races
* Battle hundreds of different enemy starships
* Build the coolest and deadliest starship in the galaxy
* Outfit your ship with thousands of components and crew
* Adventure with your friends with co-op multiplayer
* Essentially play an action RPG inside a universe of alien races playing a 4X game

Space Game Junkie interviewed Steven Peeler about Drox Operative 2.

You seemed to hem and haw on an actual sequel to Drox for a while? What finally convinced you to move forward with an actual sequel?

I was always hoping I could return to the Drox world, the first one was quite fun to work on. The hemming and hawing was really just because I don’t tend to make decisions on future games. I try to focus on the current game as much as possible.

What would you say you were least satisfied with in regards to the first game that you hope to correct in the sequel?

I would say it was the movement in general. It ended up being slower, and not as important as other systems, as I would have liked.  In the sequel, it has been sped up quite a bit, you can dodge more incoming attacks than before, and you can actually collide with enemy ships. Basically, used well movement can help you greatly and used poorly it will get you into more trouble.

On the opposite tack, what do you think worked best in the original that you hope to improve or expand upon in the sequel?

I think the atmosphere of existing in this universe that responds to your actions but also evolves based on what all of the races are doing worked really well and is still pretty unique. This is still very true in the sequel, but we are giving the players even more tools to impact the universe around them.

A trailer for the recently announced Drox operative 2 has been released.

Drox Operative 2 has been announced and is a action RPG inside a 4X game with co-op play.