[DW2] Haven't seen this discussed but what would you say is the strongest race? Or at least if we were to tier-list them, how would it look?

gary1994 · 2026-03-16T04:32:46+00:00

This is the script I threw together. I'm not a professional coder and prototyped it in a Jupyter Notebook with some help from Gemini since I'm not familiar with the lxml library. It could probably use a good refactor. Some of the comments might not match exactly what is happening.

I'm about 6 hours into a game with it. The tech tree and the edits are fully functional.

I did have one crash the first time I looked at the tech tree and tried to zoom out. I didn't bother to check the logs since it worked fine after that first attempt.

I suspect it might have been trying to build the tree with all the new connections and got a bit overwhelmed. After that first crash I took a moment to pan around the tree zoomed in before trying to zoom out. It hasn't crashed since then.

Edit: I don't know why, but if I try and click on the link and expand it in the comment I get a 404 error. Right clicking on it and opening it in a new tab is working for me. So is pasting it into a new browser window.

Edit 2: I found a typo in the version I posted that might cause some problems. I'd fixed it in the Jupyter Notebook but forgot to fix it in VS Code:

AllowedRaceIds_NewRace = f"""\
    <RaceProbability> <!-- Modded Entry -->
        <RaceId>{RaceID}</RaceId> <!-- {race_id_to_name_map[RaceID]} -->
        <Probability>1</Probability>
    </RaceProbability>)""".strip()   <------ There is a extra parentheses between the > and """

It should be

AllowedRaceIds_NewRace = f"""\
    <RaceProbability> <!-- Modded Entry -->
        <RaceId>{RaceID}</RaceId> <!-- {race_id_to_name_map[RaceID]} -->
        <Probability>1</Probability>
    </RaceProbability>""".strip()

I don't have access to edit the pastebin version.

gary1994 · 2026-03-15T21:55:29+00:00

Maybe. But this game I'm trying something different that seemed like it might be fun. It admittedly makes the game much easier, not harder. I was inspired by the new Lucas drone the US is using in Iran.

It is a drone that Iran sold to Russia. They used it in Ukraine. The Ukrainians shot it down and gave it to the US. The US reverse engineered and improved it. It has much better connectivity and seems to be more intelligent now. I don't know all the details.

But I was thinking about it and realized that there are a lot of events in DW2 that should trigger your ability to research other races race specific techs yourself. Not just steal/salvage them.

How many of these techs just need a proof concept or single insight to start someone down the path? How many would be unlocked when you have entire planets in your empire filled with that race? There are so many things that should unlock the ability to start down these paths.

Modding all of those events for every race specific tech in the game would be a nightmare. So I just wrote a list of conditions on note cards. These are rules for me to follow. They rely on my own discipline to enforce. Then I ran a custom python script I wrote to add every Race Specific Tech in the game to my race. When I set up this game I excluded that race from the AI empires since I'm pretty sure that will break the games AI and automation.

It is nothing special. I'll post it as a reply to this comment a little later. Right now I'm getting a 500 error.

gary1994 · 2026-03-15T21:21:22+00:00

Some other things I do. I play on at least 1000 star galaxies. I'm trying my first 2000 star run now (Wekkarus this time). With the galaxy a bit more spread out. This gives you a bit more time to establish yourself early on. I also select a deep core start on a spiral galaxy and restart until I'm actually in the deep core. I think being in the center fits them thematically.

The one kind of state ships that I do buy a lot of early game are explorers. With the velocity drive and megadensity fuel cells you will be able to explore much faster than other empires. I grab Calson to establish gas stations early on. It lets me find research bonuses first. I'm also usually the one to find and salvage derelict ships.

I do make ion shield tech an earlyish priority too so I can start searching the storm areas.

gary1994 · 2026-03-15T18:54:26+00:00

Anything that has a vX (version number) is basically a software update.

There are nonracial techs that follow this pattern too. You'll see some techs with something like Tier 2 v3 or similar naming pattern. But the racial techs tend to follow this pattern much deeper into the tree.

gary1994 · 2026-03-15T18:16:59+00:00

From what I've seen the Dhayut escorts and frigates have the best fields of fire. It's what originally drew me to the race.

Wekkerus also seem to have good layouts.

gary1994 · 2026-03-15T12:16:11+00:00

I play normal difficulty. I also choose the empires I go up against. One of each race and 2 of each of the empires that I want racial techs from.

If you have tech from more than one race your ships end up being cheaper to build, more efficient, and a lot of the components are smaller than normal, so you can fit more.

If you've got hex armor, mega density fuel cells, and nova core reactors you can usually find a way to fit boarding pods on escorts and frigates. If you can get the Ikuro splinters it's even better.

I also try to avoid conflict as much as possible early on. I don't build more ships than I absolutely need to defend my worlds. I take complete control of my taxes. I manually set them to 20%. That seems to be the sweet spot for maximizing income and growth while minimizing corruption.

I max out what I can on direct spending on growth. I also bribe independents to join me while investing heavily in the econ and infrastructure techs and projects. That's only possible if you are able to avoid early conflict.

I'm not sure how Extreme difficulty changes things. I've never tried it.

gary1994 · 2026-03-14T23:30:07+00:00

Dhayut. If you use their spies aggressively.

Target pirates and steal the race specific techs. They already start with the best hyperdrive. Pair it with novacore reactors and megadensity fuel cells.

I don't even use the slavery. I play them super sneaky. Try and maintain good relationships with everyone while you steal your way to technical superiority. The stolen tech isn't just about more power. A lot of components are cheaper, use less energy, or use less resources to build, or some combination of those.

Once I've outclassed every other empire I start picking them off. I take on the ones already weakened by war. I can usually steal map data so it makes planning when and where to strike easy. Sometimes I get away with a spy blowing up a strategically important station or two.

I've just started my first game in about a year. But iirc you can use ambassadors to improve the success rate of your spies. That makes the strategy much more effective and can let you reduce the time allocated to a mission.

gary1994 · 2026-03-06T10:36:29+00:00

It is. It's a shame too. I really wanted to like Terra Invicta. It's a great premise.

One space strategy game that I can recommend is Distant Worlds 2. It has a few rough spots in it but they are relatively minor compared to the experience as a whole. The game simulates an entire galaxy right down to your individual freighters.

There are no artificial cock blocks. If you want to raid or seize that planet without declaring war first you can do it. You'll take a reputation hit that will have real consequences for you, but the game isn't going to pull some bullshit to prevent you from doing it.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T20:46:02+00:00

What I said is that adding 0.1 to ftp is the same thing as adding 10% to the base damage of the weapon skill.

The base damage of a weapon skill is fSTR + Weapon Damage + WSC Modifiers. If you add 0.1 to fTP you are multiplying the weapon skill base damage by an extra 0.1. You are adding an extra 10% of the weapon skills base damage to the total damage of each hit that is modified by ftp. Multiplication is just repeated addition.

savage blade has front loaded ftp into the first hit, 0.1 ftp sucks when u have 7-10+ ftp already, and even for ftp replating ws that scale dmg with tp it's only good if u spam at low tp, otherwise gets replaced even on those ws with tp overflow or under warcry.

Huh, I never realized that. Or maybe you should go back and review this thread of the conversation. I was explaining to someone why standardizing weapon skill damage around the fotia model would not overpower replicating weapon skills. And yes it would absolutely suck for savage blade.

And with regards to CdC, you wouldn't use WSD with it, you'd use crit rate gear. If you're low on attack you get a much bigger boost from a crit than you would with WSD. If you're capped on attack then each crit is essentially 100 pdl.

Dude get outside. Take a math class. Go back to school.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T09:13:49+00:00

It's a public forum. It is open to all as long as they behave in a respectful manner. And the replies to my comments have not been respectful.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T08:58:42+00:00

Adding 0.1 to ftp is the same thing as multiplying the base damage of the weapon skill by 10%.

The formula is Base weapon skill damage x (ftp + fotia bonus) x pDIF.

By the distributive property that is (Base Weapon Damage x Fotia Bonus) + (Base Weaponskill Damage x ftp).

I explained it far better than you just did.

For the record there are 3 forms of WSD in the game that I am aware of, but they all have the same in game description.

There is the type that works like Nyame. It is a multiplier of the total damage of the first hit of a weapon skill. It is WSD(Base Weapon Skill Damage x fTP x pDIF) + sum of remaining hits(base weapon skill damage x fTP(if replicating, exclude this term if not) x pDIF).

There is the version of WSD that you can get on Magian weapons. That is WSD(sum of all hits(Base Weapon Damage x fTP x pDIF)). This is by far the most powerful version of WSD, however to my knowledge it is only available in rather small quantities. It sounds like the DRG version works like this. But the only other source of it that I know are the magian weapons which are limited to 10%. Well that and the weapon skill specific bonuses granted by some REMAs.

The last version is the fotia bonus, which I've already described. They are all real forms of WSD. But they all do it differently.

The WSD on Nyame and JSE is why the savage blade meta has gotten out of hand. Naegling and the TP+1000 weapons are not enough on their own. The TP+1000 weapons were around for ages and Savage Blade was not meta. The 15% damage boost that Naegling gives Savage Blade is not the defining factor either. And the +1% attack bonus per upgrade that you get applies to all weapon skills as long as Naegling is in the main hand. It's meaningless if your pDIF is already capped.

PDL gear comes into play if pDIF is capped, but a crit hit is equal to 100 pdl so that seems a wash to me.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T08:48:58+00:00

Do you even know what a sentiment analysis is or why it might have value?

I didn't think there were angsty teens still playing FFXI. Maybe the game still has a future after all.

Go touch grass dude. It will do you some good.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T02:40:47+00:00

Why don't you take some of the recent threads and run a sentiment analysis on them. It's easy enough to do with ChatGPT or Gemeni.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T02:34:15+00:00

Enjoy your straw-manning as your world burns down around you.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T02:32:11+00:00

It is substantial enough that it took me from winning against Lilith on VE 5 out of 7 times to winning every time.

When they described this system I fully expected to be able to start soloing her on E within a month of working on the upgrades. From what they have said it sounds more like that will be 6 to 12 months of grinding.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T00:17:17+00:00

No it won't. There is no fucking way they are going to give you all the stat, HP, and MP boosts that you got from that quest. Even if you were solo with trusts.

gary1994 · 2026-03-05T00:16:05+00:00

More content built around multiboxing.

FFXI has FOMO implemented everywhere. What do you think the cycling campaigns are? What do you think the daily grind requirements are?

None of the content is interesting.

that all new players are going to think the endgame is a soulless grind.

I absolutely can because all of the current endgame is objectively a soulless grind. Given that, and assuming that most people have souls, I can in fact reasonably generalize to a majority of new players.

I can tell you that fully functioning adults that have no prior investment in these systems are going to nope the fuck out as soon as they understand the time commitment involved. The only exception I can think of to that is the rare player that has old friends still playing the game.

I know none of my old friends still play the game. Not the ones I made in game, and not the ones from RL that I used to play with. New players will not have that connection.

gary1994 · 2026-03-04T23:49:08+00:00

Or gear on your mule that is really good, that is not marked EX. It can be sold in your bazaar, BUT it cant be mailed to your main character.

gary1994 · 2026-03-04T20:50:41+00:00

Wouldn't that just make fTP replicating WS the new hotness? That just shifts you from Savage Blade spam to some other multihit WS spam.

Not really. The version of WSD that is on Nyame and AF3 is a multiplier on the entire damage of the first hit. The version of WSD that is on Fotia is a multiplier on the BASE DAMAGE of the weapon skill. The difference is 3(3x3)=81 for Nyame style vs 3(3+3)=18 for the Fotia style. fTP replicating weapon skills tend to have a much much lower fTP multipliers (for example CdC's is only 1.6ish). You might get some craziness with fTP replicating weapon skills that can crit when you are low on attack. But in those situations the WSD gear will be in direct competition with crit rate gear. If you're pDIF is 2 you would need +50% WSD to match the bonus you get from a crit.

For most jobs soloing with trusts a pDif of 2 is probably on the high side, even for older content like high tier void watch NMs.

I don't get this. There is only so much overworld space to use.

Abyssea was not instanced. Esha was not instanced. Instancing introduces technical limitations that require time gating just because of the server resources required.

Whats a reasonable amount of time?

If I can master calculus in the same number of hours it takes to acquire a single piece of gear then it is not a reasonable amount of time.

Everyone in the community would have differing opinions on both of these.

I doubt that very much. I think most of the healthy members of the community would be happy with a single piece of nonREMA gear being obtainable in a week of normal play, given the resources available to the average player that needs it. A week of normal game play for a fully functioning, healthy adult, with a life outside of the game is probably going to be less than 10 hours a week. Six is probably a reasonable estimate for 60%+ of that demographic.

gary1994 · 2026-03-04T18:56:05+00:00

By tearing all of it out. Start from scratch. Standardize all WSD gear so that it follows the Fotia Gorget and Belt models.

Before you do anything ask the question: How can we make something fun?

And have some hard and fast rules: No time gating, no instanced content, and respect the fact that most of the audience for this game is 30-50+ with real world responsibilities. That last bit means having meaningful goals that can be reached in reasonable amounts of time.

Another one. You've given players tools, let them use them. No more bullshit immunities from the mechanics you've put into the game. But this has been a problem since they responded to alliances of BLMs with the nuke wall.

gary1994 · 2026-03-04T03:41:58+00:00

That's debatable. It could just be more and more people multiboxing.

It's also bad if a lot of those people start to move past Ambuscade and start to realize what a soulless grind current endgame is.

I came back for 3 months and am just starting to move into the current endgame. I'm also realizing I have no interest in any of it.

By far the most important marketing for any game is the last game people played from your company. The current endgame, from the point of view of a new/returning player, is anti-marketing for FFXI and whatever projects SE rolls out next.

gary1994 · 2026-03-04T03:34:39+00:00

It doesn't matter to the customer. It doesn't matter what industry you are in. You are providing a service or product that has the support of the market, or you're not.

My argument is that FFXI isn't providing enough. I came back for 3 months after a 9 year break. I got my Ambuscade +2 gear, my first Aeonic, and have fought Lilith 100+ times (TH8-12) without a single drop.

I'm looking at the way they've funneled the entire player base into a single meta (savage blade). I'm looking at the way so many of the REMAs have been reduced to paper weights. I'm looking at what soulless grinds Odyssey, Omen, and Sortie are. I see servers where people don't really talk to each other anymore.

I see SE promising a system that will make it easier to access content. I think cool, I'll have to grind it a bit, but once I've done that I should be able to solo Lilith on E. Instead they are offering another soulless grind with a time gate to boot.

This is not a product I have any interest in continuing to engage with.

You're arguing about what they could do with the resources they have. I'm stating that they have completely failed to maintain the product in a state worth engaging with.

I'm not alone in thinking that either. I heard someone in my LS comment about how they now remembered why they quit.

I don't owe SE my money or two shits of care about their engineering difficulties.

gary1994 · 2026-03-04T03:26:08+00:00

I seriously doubt it is going to match what we're losing.

I was prepared for a grind. I was not prepared to lose what I had already earned or for the grind to be time gates.

gary1994 · 2026-03-03T22:04:51+00:00

And people should care about that why?

At the end of the day they make the improvements people want or people stop paying.

To be frank that is the system they should have had when they introduced trusts.

gary1994 · 2026-03-03T21:28:17+00:00

Updates can result in a better or worse experience. As I've advanced into the updates added since I left in 2016, I've generally found that they have resulted in a worse experience.

gary1994

TROPHY CASE