October 20: The game is out! Go get it! Available on the developer's own website here[www.soldak.com], on Steam of course and on other platforms[www.gog.com]. Removed some egregiously out of date information, mods and references from the guide. Quick references added. Added how to get a new ship.
October 14: Starting to rework the guide for the fast nearing Drox 2 launch, a few early part are done, work-in-progress, don't mind the spelling errors etc.

The official Game Manual.[www.soldak.com]
The Discord has an helpful community![discord.gg]
Soldak games including Drox Operative 2 have their own forum.[www.soldak.com]
The Soldak website.[www.soldak.com]

Can be found here[www.patreon.com]

Drox Operative 2 ("Drox 2") is a spaceship based role-playing game. Empower your Ship and Character through fighting, questing and interactions with various alien races. Subtly influence, or outright manipulate and crush, self-determined empires. It is an infinitely replayable sandbox game with a great degree of freedom and a number of possible objectives such as conquests, alliances and glory (both good and bad!).
Ships are customized, new equipment is looted and bought, skill trees and statistics are developed as you gain experience and earn skill points through leveling up.

Click here for the Demo[www.soldak.com] on the Soldak Entertainment[www.soldak.com]website. The full version is available both here on Steam and as well as on GOG[www.gog.com].

• Download the game as above, usually from a launcher like Steam.
  
• Install it. If not from a launcher (Steam,GOG) then usually by left-clicking the downloaded file or its icon wherever it is located.
  
• Run the game. Again by clicking its, usually on your Launcher or Desktop.
  
• Click the "Play" button as seen here then on "New Ship" below in the next screen.
  
• We'll be covering character creation and gameplay in the next section!

Once you've clicked "Play" and "New Ship" you will be asked to create and name your character.

The most important decision you will make is choose a race for your character. By default, Human is selected. With a balanced skill set it is a good choice to start up with. Human ships start with an extra Thruster slot which will make them extra speed once they get their hand on one!

After this you will want to choose a name for your character, then click the "OK" button.

Click the image to make it bigger.


Once your character has been created you will create the game world, or "sector". There's quite a few options to choose from which will determine how long and difficult your game will be.

Difficulty in Drox 2 is selected by the player. The default options will suit many players and make for a good, short game. Veteran gamers will want to increase it, sometime by a lot of levels! Whereas if you're new to gaming or looking for a calmer, more relaxed experience to learn the game there are settings which can be selected to slow the game and reduce enemies, as seen below.

Important: Later on, selecting a difficulty level below your character level will drastically reduce the speed as which you gain experience. For the ease of gaining new level it is suggested to choose a difficulty at least a little higher than the default suggestion once you're comfortable to do so.

Once you're done, click the "OK" button"


This will be the first screen you see upon creation of your sector on a new character. The game is paused so you might want to take a few moment to soak it all in. More importantly as a new character you are greeted by the "Quick help" information windows as well as Tutorial ?'s which will unlock as you start moving around and clicking on things.

Here's a first look.


Clicking those big green ? signs will walk you through game elements such as winning and losing, moving your ship, playing the game, game terms, etc. Much like this guide except quicker and straight to the point!~~


You can move your ship in a number of different ways.

You can press the A and D keys to move Left or Right respectively.
The W key to move forward. The S key to cut power to your Engine when relevant based on your options..

If you use a gamepad you'll probably be using its joystick or direction buttons instead!

If "Allow Basic Mouse Move" is turned on in your options you can hold the Left mouse button and drag it around to move toward your cursor.

Speaking of Options there are many to customize your movement (and everything else!) but those are the basics.

A simple way to attack is to point and shot![/b] Aim your mouse cursor on your enemy and click your weapon, usually your left or right mouse button. This works for both auto-aiming and dumbfire weapons.

Note that for auto-aiming weapons you don't need to actually point at an enemy; if no enemy is selected or under your cursor, pressing an attack button will attack the nearest enemy.

Beside selecting and locking-on a target with your mouse cursor you can also cycle through targets on your screen (default keyboard keys: "Z" and "X") to select one. Pressing a Weapon button will then try to attack your target (again, for auto-aiming weapons).

We'll finish up the basics with one last lesson, namely moving objects around from space to your inventory and then equip it.

Here we see a ram, which make rushing into enemies very powerful and take up a yellow spot. Open up your Inventory (default keyboard key: "i")..Click the object with your left mouse button to pick it up. Finally click it from your Inventory and select an appropriate slot in your Equipment menu to install it.

Now that you're getting a feel for the User Interface and controlling your ship it's time to start actually doing stuff.

Open your quest menu by clicking this icon at the bottom of your screen or by pressing the appropriate key (default: Q). Take notice of the two quest available for you at the start of any sector: Locate any race and Visit another star system. There are many different type of quests in the game but we'll get started with those two.

This next icon will open your map. Again it can be found at the bottom of your main game screen, right next to the quest icon. Alternatively pressing your map key shortcut (default: M) will do the same. Taking a look at BOB's current star sector we can see a few thing.




1st: Located in the red circle is a nearby Starlane. Entering any such Starlane will complete the objective of our quest Visit another star system. As your map will vary you might have to explore a bit more to find any such Starlane.

2nd: All over the map, such as in the orange circle, are unexplored planets. Visiting those planets by flying toward them is bound to eventually to Locate (a) race completing your other quest.

After flying around BOB made his way to a planet occupied by the Hive: Domi. He's now able to open diplomatic relations with them, but for now, he'll focus on repairing his ship. One of the many services available to him on Domi.

1. Place your cursor on the planet until it change into a little mouth
   
2. Click "Trade"
   
3. Select "Repair Structure"

BOB is dead broke and can't afford anything else, but if he did, he could Right-Click anything from the store, like this shiny new laser. For now he'll have to sell whatever he doesn't need by placing his cursor over items in his inventory and pressing the Spacebar.

Being broke isn't that great, so BOB will now use his new contacts with the Hive to obtain some quests and in the process, hopefully, some loot and credits.


Note:Your own experience will vary. Perhaps you'll find some genocidal dragons with a penchant for human flesh as your first contacts. You'll just have to make do and play nice.

1. First open you relationship menu (icon to the left or default key: R)
   
2. Select any race with a red "?", which indicate quests are available.
   
3. Click on the race in question then select "Get Quest".
   
4. Select and read a quest, "Accept" it if you want then click "Done" to close the menu (or press Escape key).

Once you gain experience you gain a level. With every level up you gain 5 Crew Points and 2 Skill Points.

Main ways to gain experience:

• Destroying other ships
  
• Completing Quests
  
• Exploring Planets, Anomalies and Star Systems

Clicking on this icon open your character menu (default key: C). There's a whole bunch of numbers in there but for now we're really only interested in your Attributes which you can see to the right and the big number in green. This number represent how many points you can spend on your Attributes.

Attributes make your ship better and allow you to equip better items, by example, Tactical generally allow you to equip better weapons.

We close this chapter with a view of the Skills menu, which can be opened by clicking this icon or the T key. There's a ton of stuff there and we'll revisit this menu later but for now let's just pay attention to the bottom right of this menu. If you are Human it will look like this, with generic skill available being the first 3 and the 2 tree available to your race to the right. Note the points remaining to be spent at the bottom.



For more information about individual skill place your cursor over its icon. Note that the cost is next to the icon and that the cost increase by 1 everytime you click the "+" button. Finally, you need some gold to train your skills. The cost is in the mouseover popup.

Again, if you're Human, you have access to the Scan skill to the right, a few points of which will come very handy during your explorations.

After having made friend with the Hive and completed a few quests for them BOB decide it's time to leave the Star System he's in and explore the Sector for new challenges. First he'll pick a destination.

Let's get back to the Map (default key: M). We've explored the Star System map before. This time we'll switch over to the entire Sector by clicking "To Sector Map" at the bottom or pressing the hotkey which by default is the Tab key.


Starlanes are the main way to move between systems. Additionally when you arrive in a new sector you want right next to a Jump Gate which can be used to rapidly move between sectors but they must be activated first to work. Ways to activate include physically reaching a gate and touching, buying it from a Race and stealing it from them.

BOB realize he'll have to up his game if he wants to be taken seriously as a Drox Operative in this sector. After doing some questing and monster hunting he's earned enough skill points to call in a new ship. BOB order his new ship by clicking open his Skill menu (default keyboard key: T) then putting 4 skill point into the first box of his "Hull Slots" columns. With his new ship acquired he'll finally get the respect he deserve. Maybe.

You are (a) Drox Operative. You have a ship of X race. Ship Race. Boom. Just gonna call them races for now.


At the very least you get two spaces for your crew. Technically speaking you can equip crew in all four slots as long as they are empty, this is normal. You also get two more slots which vary by race. Some of them are arguably badass while others next to useless.
Weapon? Badass. Anti-missile? Might as well put a crew in that.

You get two. Some trees are shared between a few races. Not all of them are equals. Not all of them are tested or balanced. Many of them are terribly, terribly expensive in skill points. Finally as far as young races are concerned it's entirely possible to end up with the same skill tree twice for double the fun. You unlock young race by meeting them in the game then winning in alliance with them, more or less.

Master of Mines. At high level, can activate auto-targeting mines, which happily target all the wrong things most of the times, but we love them anyway as they're trying their best. Humans also got great utilities skills in term of scanning speed, radar and finding more items.
A ramming powerhouse. A ton of structure and plate, life leech on every hit, area effect and damage over time. At higher level can turn all your defense into even more structure. They also get the option of faster scanning and better radar like Humans.
Scavenger combine many abilities without a clear focus but including many options, such as increase item find, damage over time and various buffs and debuffs. At higher level gain a dubious attack reflection ability as well as an even more dubious ability to turn dead enemies into derelict.

Master of Beam Weapons. At high level Beams can do max damage at max range at the cost of reduced range. Utopian can make most weapon chain. Has many skills to make enemies weaker but no real utility to speak off.
Powerful and versatile race with an emphasis on Fighters and Marines. At higher level can create two more fighters from each fighter bay. At very high level their Marines can completely ignore enemy shields which can be extremely powerful. Some focus on Ballistic weapons.
Drakk has a good and versatile offense tree (including more projectiles) but really does one thing well: Fighters. At high level their fighters can siphon health and link their shields to yours, as well as act as (a sort of) escape shuttle.
Building on a Power Load skill and Power Load extra slot a Fringe ship can power their ships even more than than the generic Power Mastery Skill would allow. Their favored weapons are Plasma. They have the options to fire more projectile, fork them and make them homing.
Missiles. Lots (two extra projectile abilities) of faster, re-targeting and possibly even Area of Effect Missiles at higher levels as their last special ability. Aggressive tree does include shield% and plating% options.

They have skills to raise their Structure and Regenerate it. Good utility and diplomatic abilities, they have a skill to lower aggression range. At high level they can charm the many Talons you'll be facing and completely prevent reputation degradation. Terrible equipment slots.
Good all-rounder on the utility front with access to diplomacy, rumor and propaganda boost. They have easy access to a chance to increase technology finds. Same good debuffing abilities as Utopian. At higher level they can use Shield+Plating+Structure as Energy(!).
Master of cloak and manipulation. Two abilities to reduce aggression range. Skills to manipulate races and gain items. Can become VERY good at placing and using spies. Can learn to disarm traps and at higher level are the only ones who can destroy mines.

Tactical + Helm / Mine + Thruster (speed)
Strengths: Mines, Explosives
Utilities: Scanning, Radar, Item Finds

Economist Tree
Treasure Hunter (Magic Find / Extra Components)
Exploit Weakness (+14% All Weapon Damage)
Explosives Expert Enhances Explosion damage
Extortion (Quest Credits (25% per))
Flash Bang (Freeze/Stun debuff)
Rupture Does 50% of original hit damage over 5 seconds
Mine Tracking Enhances Mine weapons

Expansionist Tree
Scanning Expert (reduce scanning time)
Weapons Proficiency (increase weapon damage)
Radar Mastery (20/20% radar increase)
Fast Learner (more combat exp)
Survival (increase res to all, 8 by level up to 40)
Mercy Chance when low on health, to temporarily convert attacking enemy to a friend. Status Effect goes on new ally
Planetology Adds a chance that when scanning a planet that you find a planet feature that would have been missed by others

Helm + Structure / Missile Defense + Damage Control (structure regen)
Strengths: Bonus Structure and Regeneration, Debuff All Resistance
Utilities: Move Buff when Hit, Diplomacy, Talon Charming, Escape Notice (farther aggro)

Trustworthy Tree
Xenosociology The study of the development, structure, and functioning of alien societies
Adrenaline Move Buff+ when Hit
Feedback Does 75% to 125% damage back to an attacker (+25% for each additional level)
Phasing (all resists multiplied by 20% when hit for 10 seconds)
Tactician
Intimidate (debuff att and def of all enemies in 500(31) range)
Unforgetable Races will not forget what you have done for or against them. This completely gets rid of relation degradation, but negative relation changes are much worse

Regeneration Tree
Nanomite Cloud A cloud of nanomites that heals your ship and any nearby allies
Harmony (0.14 escape notice per level, example at max level)
Resolve (increase structure)
Penetration (debuff resistance)
Blur (def boost when hit)
Resilience (all res boost)
Talon Control "A small chance on each hit to take control of enemy if it is a Talon, but your ship does 33% less damage to all Talons, last 60 seconds + 30 secs per level

Computer + Computer / Computer (atk, def) + Virus (beam+debuff)
Strengths: (Chaining) Beams, Attack%, Shields%, Atk+Def+Damage debuffs
Utilities: None

Industrial Tree
Precision (10/10% attack/attack%)
Frequency Modulation (0.07 shield% / 0.09 Beam Damage%) (!doesn't say beam at this time)
Mining (20% creds)
Chained Beams (20% chaining beams to laser, plasma cannon, but not ballistic)
Beam Mastery Enhances Beam weapons
Ignite (-0.54/level damage over 5 seconds Thermal damage)
Infinite Beam Beam damage no longer reduces with distance, but they have less damage and range

Ruthless Tree
Assassin (5 attack, 0.05 attack, 0.05 alldamage)
Hack (Debuff 14 defense, -0.14 defense%)
Ruthless (-14%/-14% (-0.2/-0.2) min/max damage)
Scramble Chance to scramble the enemy's computers or neurons
Electronic Warfare (AoE debuff On Hit)
Surgical Strikes (crit and damage boost)
Vanish A chance to disappear from enemies with each successful kill

Structural + Tactical / Ballistic Weapon + Light Fighter
Strengths: Ballistic Weapons, Extra Projectiles, AoE on Hit, Thrust, Marines, Fighters
Utility: Escape Notice

Productive Tree
Hunter (5 trust, 0.05 trust%, 0.05 escape notice)
Spot Vulnerability (increase crit 0.14%)
Ballistics Mastery Enhances Ballistic weapons
Kinetic Shockwave A chance that projectile releases a shockwave to do the specified percent of the original damage to all enemies in range of shockwave
Energy Net (-19,0/19/0.19 def/def%/movement AoE Debuff on Hit)
Barrage (17% to 80% chance to fire extra 3 projectiles)
Concussive Blast (Explosion on Hit, remove piercing)

Uncreative Tree
Brute Force (0.1 increase damage with all weapons)
Marine Tactics (0.14 to marine damage)
Persistence (0.2 to pet hp)
Overwhelm Enhances Fighter Bays (noted as fighter/lightfighters only)
Retribution A chance when a minion's ship is destroyed, that they release large blast that does 20% (per level) of your their max health (structure + armor plating + shields) to all enemies in range
Swarm Increases how many fighters can be launched per fighter bay
Marine Phasing Marines can transport through shields, but they take more damage

Structural + Tactical / Ballistic Weapon + Light Fighter
Strengths: (Speedy) Missiles , (Kinetic) Damage, Extra Projectiles, Plating%, Shield%
Utility: Sabotage

Natural Flyers Tree
Fighter Training (pet damage increased by 0.1)
Fighter Armor (increase pet armor (all types of defense?) by 0.14)
Coordinated Maneuvers (0.1/0.1 pet attack/defense)
Fighter Resistance (.27 to pet resistance (do they even have a base?)per level)
Fighter Siphon Minions heal their ship each time they damage an enemy
Overload Transfer If your ship normally would be destroyed and you have a minion alive, avoid destruction and gain 50% of structure back, but the minion is destroyed and only if haven't used this tactic recently
Energy Transfer Balances and shares your minion's and your shields constantly

Aggressive Tree
Thermal Damage Enhances Thermal damage
Explosion Damage Enhances Explosion damage
Kinetic Damage Enhances Kinetic damage
IronSkin (increase Armor Plating% by 0.27)
ShieldMastery (increase Shield% by .38)
FullSpread A chance to release 3 extra projectiles
Overload A weapon gets 1.5% extra damage per point of Tactical that your ship has over the needed Tactical amount for that weapon

Structural + Helm / Plating + Thruster
Strengths: Plating%+Structure%+Life Leech (Ramming), DoT, Defense converted to Structure
Utility: Scanning, Radar

Hardy Tree
Melt Does 50% of original hit damage over 5 seconds
Absorption (ManaLeechPercentWhenHit 0.1 per level)
Guardian (10/0.1/0.1 struc/struc%/armorplate%)
Life Leech "(LifeLeechOnHit 5.5)"
Reactive Armor Does 75% to 125% damage back to an attacker (+25% for each additional level)
Explosive Impact A chance that projectile releases an explosion to do 25% (+15% per additional levels) of the original damage to all enemies in range of explosion
Juggernaut 50% of original defense value is added to structure, but defense is decreased to 0

Expansionist Tree
Scanning Expert (reduce scanning time)
Weapons Proficiency (increase weapon damage)
Radar Mastery (20/20% radar increase)
Fast Learner (more combat exp)
Survival (increase res to all, 8 by level up to 40)
Mercy Chance when low on health, to temporarily convert attacking enemy to a friend. Status Effect goes on new ally
Planetology Adds a chance that when scanning a planet that you find a planet feature that would have been missed by others

Engineering + Computer / Shield + Virus Weapon
Strengths: None
Utility: Technology Find Chance, Diplomacy+Propaganda+Rumors

Brilliant Tree
Technology Find Technology Find Chance
Weapon Focus Enhances All weapons
Mind Control Diplomacy+Propaganda+Rumors
Precognition Def%,Atk%,Crit%
Hologram A chance when hit to create a hologram fighter that greatly distracts enemies
Personal EscapeSuit If your ship is destroyed and you will have a chance to escape alive! Works just like an escape pod without needing one
Energy Flow Components use structure, armor plating, and shields as your energy source

Ruthless Tree
Assassin (5 attack, 0.05 attack, 0.05 alldamage)
Hack (Debuff 14 defense, -0.14 defense%)
Ruthless (-14%/-14% (-0.2/-0.2) min/max damage)
Scramble Chance to scramble the enemy's computers or neurons
Electronic Warfare (AoE debuff On Hit)
Surgical Strikes (crit and damage boost)
Vanish A chance to disappear from enemies with each successful kill

Helm + Computer / Decoy + Cloaking
Strengths: Mass AoE Def% and Atk% Debuff
Utilities: Avoiding and Destroying Mines, Disarming Traps, Spying+Planting+Sabotage, Rumor, Escape Notice, Extra Credit+Extra Components+Magic Find

Spies Tree
Evasive Maneuvering (10/0.1 def/def%)
Disarm Mine (disarm traps)
Rumormonger (0.1/0.1 positive and negative rumor change)
Spying (-0.07/0.07/0.07/0.07 escapenotice, espionagechance, sabotagechance,
plantspychance)
Collector (0.13/0.13/0.13 money,itemfind,tweakitem)
Ambush Do more damage to an undamaged enemy
Mine Targeting Can target mines with your weapons. Note: they will detonate when they take any damage

Stealth Tree
Stalker (5/0.05/0.05 att/att%/escape notice)
(reduce trap triggering distance by -0.1) A chance that projectile releases a shockwave to do 15% (+10% per additional levels) of the original damage and a debuff to all enemies in range of shockwave
Personal Cloaking (0.065/0.065/0.065 spying/sabotage/plantspy)
Mine Cloak (reduce trap triggering distance by 0.1)
Chain Reaction A chance that projectile causes a chain reaction that does 25% (+15% per additional levels) of the original damage to enemy
Escape Artist If your ship normally would be destroyed, avoid destruction and gain 50% of structure back, but only if haven't used this tactic recently
Holographic Defense Uses up 50% of your max shields to increase defense by the amount of shields lost

Tactical + Tactical / Passive Weapon (buffing) + Light Missile
Strengths: (Faster, Retargeting, AoE damaging) Missiles, [Kinetic] Damage, Extra Projectiles, Armor%, Shield%
Utilities: Sabotage

Aggressive Tree
Thermal Damage Enhances Thermal damage
Explosion Damage Enhances Explosion damage
Kinetic Damage Enhances Kinetic damage
Iron Skin (increase Armor Plating% by 0.27)
Shield Mastery (increase Shield% by .38)
Full Spread A chance to release 3 extra projectiles
Overload A weapon gets 1.5% extra damage per point of Tactical that your ship has over the needed Tactical amount for that weapon

Demanding Tree
Saboteur (0.1 -> 0.5 sabotage%)
Missile Mastery Enhances Missile weapons
Berserker (more projectiles, less defense, up to 2 extra projectiles at 25% chance)
Missile Afterburn (faster projectiles)
Shatter (kinetic explosion on nearby enemies on 25% of kills)
Blood Lust (mana leech on hit)
Missile Retargeting Enhances Missile weapons. If missile no longer has a valid target, it will try to find a new one within its range

Tactical + Tactical / Passive Weapon (buffing) + Light Missile
Strengths: Max Shield%, Lower Component Damage, Shield Bypass
Utilities: Find Items+Magic Find, Technology Find

Scavenger Tree
Salvaging (Increase chance to find components/tweaked find chances)
Weaken (chance to debuff on hit)
Harvest (manaleech% and shieldleech% on kill)
Crumble Does 50% of original hit damage over 5 seconds (from 10% to 30% on Hit)
Amplify Damage Enhances All weapons
Destabilize Core A chance that projectile explodes to do 25% (+15% per additional levels) of the original damage to all enemies in range of explosion
Neutron Burst A chance to leave the enemy ship derelict and available to loot

Reverse Engineering Tree
Maintenance Expert (-0.25 component damage)
Reverse Engineering (increase chance to find technology)
Shield Harmonics (0.20 to max shield%)
Quick Learner (0.27 to combat learning%)
Penetrate (0.125 to bypass shield(%?))
Targeting Expert (27,0.27,0.27 to attk/attk% and crit%)
Deflection A 20% chance of deflecting a projectile that hits your ship back towards an enemy with 4 times more damage than the original. It uses up 20% of your energy though

Engineering + Tactical / Power Collector + Passive Weapon
Strengths: Plasma Weapons, Homing/Extra/Forking Projectiles
Utility: Power Load

Chaotic Tree
Power Amplification (5 power, 0.05 power%, 0.05% alldamage)
Power Overload When your ship is destroyed, a huge blast does 10% (per level) of your total max health (structure + armor plating + shields) to all enemies in range
Chaotic Projectiles (0.1/0.1 forking/extra projectiles)
Feedback Pulse Does 75% to 125% damage back to an attacker (+25% for each additional level)
Plasma Cannon Mastery Enhances Plasma weapons
Unstable Projectiles A chance that projectile explodes to do 25% (+15% per additional levels) of the original damage to all enemies in range of explosion
Homing Chaos Adds a chance that projectiles will home in on their enemies, but all homing projectiles now have a chance to miss based on attack/defense

Aggressive Tree
Thermal Damage Enhances Thermal damage
Explosion Damage Enhances Explosion damage
Kinetic Damage Enhances Kinetic damage
IronSkin (increase Armor Plating% by 0.27)
Shield Mastery (increase Shield% by .38)
Full Spread A chance to release 3 extra projectiles
Overload A weapon gets 1.5% extra damage per point of Tactical that your ship has over the needed Tactical amount for that weapon

Click here[docs.google.com] for more data about the various subraces.)

Unlocking them mostly consist in waiting and fomenting rebellion, lab accidents (this can be done through Propaganda and Sabotage) and generally speaking, letting crazy things run their crazy course without helping fix them.

Pay regular attention to rebellions. Once they are starting Rebel ships will start to appear along with a relevant quest in the quest menus in your map quest sub-sections. Then look at your sector map for the rebel ship, which will something be a purple dot or simply a hard to see ship model. The first rebels will often show up near the sun of the sector. Do note that just like Rescue targets, Rebels appear on top of the fog of war, making them possibly much easier to see in such a case. Fog of War can be reset to full on your map menu if need be.


Stats which vary from the original race are in brackets. Only skill trees are noted, for specific skills refer to base race skill trees. Notes where appropriate, by example, if their crew give different stats and what's the minimum level until they appear organically through quests.

Karma events exist for all non-rebels subraces which leads to mass rebellions which can be exploited to unlock said race.

Usually similar to their origin races but with somewhat varying stat specialization, crews, traits, starting items and more importantly skill trees.
Engineering + {Helm} / Shield + {Decoy}
Brilliant + {Spies}
{Tactical crews}, Level 20 minimum

{Engineering} + Helm / {Shield} + Thruster
Expansionist Tree + {Brilliant}
{Computer crews}, Level 15 minimum

Playing as a Rebel is new to Drox 2. Generally speaking rebels are the opposite in character of their original race.

{Computer} + Structural / Damage Control + {Virus Weapon}
Regeneration + {Aggressive}

Helm + Tactical / Thruster + {Passive Weapon} (weapon speed)
Economist Tree + {Aggressive}

Helm + {Helm} / Light Figher + {Missile Defense}
Natural Flyer + {Trustworthy}

{Tactical} + Computer / {Light Figher} + Virus Weapon
{Uncreative} + Ruthless
Soften up targets with your Ruthless debuffs for your Fighters. Cool cortex rebels wear shades.

Computer + {Helm} / Computer + {Missile Defense}
Industrial + {Trustworthy}

Helm + Computer / {Missile Defense} + Cloaking
Stealth + {Trustworthy}

Talons (Dryad)
Legion (Utopia)
Overlord (Hive)

The best trigger is a pre-requisite quest spreading to a planet of the "main" race. In theory all main races have a chance to create their own subrace rebel quests. So if Shadow exist, they will spawn the quests for the Zombie and Paranoia subraces... by a small chance, if at high enough level.

Example: Zombie Rebel Quests mostly spawn from Zombie Outbreak Quests spreading to a Shadow planet. The latter will spawn automatically from time to time as long as Shadow has spawned in the current sector.

Zombie Outbreaks alternatively could be caused as one of the results of Brunt's special missions or Biological Accidents. Biological Accident can happen in a multitude of way but Shadow also spawn "trick" missions that can trigger them.

Note that you can't spawn subraces other than from the main race ie: zombie outbreaks spreading to any world other than a Shadow world will never trigger Zombie Rebels.

Below is a very partial diagram which document, on the bottom left, some of the most direct quests leading to subrace rebels appearing. Again: Note that this graph is only for the behind the scene aspect, in practice, it's mostly "get lucky while the main race exist". Click to enlarge.

(data about weapons here[docs.google.com], for info on item instead click here[docs.google.com])

Weapon in Drox can be roughly divided in two categories: Auto-Aim and Manual Aim.

Auto-Aiming weapons require Attack rating to hit and are tested against the Defense of the enemy. Manual Aim automatically hit if they physically collide with the enemy; they get a bonus to critical hit on offense from Attack while they get a bonus to critical hit protection on defense from Defense.

An important concept to understand is that in Drox not all weapons are completely unique in design. By example a "Laser" obtained at level one is virtually identical to a "Death Ray" obtained at level 100 in it's basic statistics. It share the shame blueprint. Turning those blueprints into categories is what this section is all about!

Modifiers and variations then make for (sometime widely) differing end results. That's things such as sockets, added damage of various amounts and types, skill modifiers and added effects (again usually only applying to only some types of weapons), weapon rarity and so on.

Weapons can also receive (many) non-weapon attributes on top of their weapon-specific attributes.

Let's create a weapon, say, a Space Chainsaw. A Manual Aim weapon of very short range equipped in an heavy slot.

A Space Chainsaw does 4 point of damage-per-second* (DPS) as a base and an added 2.5 point of DPS for every item level it has.

Item Level is an attribute of items which varies roughly based on the source level. If a monster is level 10 you can expect a level 10 Space Chainsaw as loot.

Next is perhaps the most important statistic outside DPS, its Energy use or "Energy Per Second (EPS) Again there is a base, of 1 and a per-level increase of 0.10 per item level. Our chainsaw attack very quickly at a Reuse rate of 0.25, meaning it attack roughly 4 times a second. Meaning at level 1 it use roughly 4 energy-per-second, making our chainsaw very hungry for energy!

Not a real statistic per say but still useful is the DPS per EPS aka its DPE
You won't see that one in the game but it's here so I'll explain it. This is the energy efficiency of a weapon. It doesn't take account the many ways to recover energy but it does give a general idea as to which weapon will use the more energy per point of inflicted damage.

Our Space Chainsaw also has multiple other statistics:

• Range of 50. This is almost point-blank.
  
• Speed of 1000. Almost instantaneous to reach the target.
  
• Damage Type -> Kinetic. Representing a form of physical energy.
  
• Area of Effect (Circle). Cause it's a round Space Chainsaw.
  
• Knockback. It will throw the enemy away some distance, similar to ramming.
  
• ... and so on, there's a lot of possibly statistics! As noted above, it's Manual Aim. Because Manual Aim weapon don't miss and neither should Space Chainsaws.

*The game itself give multiple values such as minimum and maximum damage range, which are then multipled by rate of fire(reuse time). For the sake of simplicity I abbreviated them as the DPS noted above, a value also given in a weapon's tooltips in-game.

As a rule weapons and fighters in Heavy slots deal more damage. When the same item "type" exist in two variety, by example (Dual) Plasma and (Light) Fighters, the Heavy slot do roughly twice as much damage. Energy use vary. Dual Plasma use twice as much energy in Heavy slots while Light fighter in Medium slots use the same amount of energy as Heavy slot Fighter.

For the full list of weapons and statistics click here[docs.google.com].

Base, Chaining and Manual Aim. Heavy Slots only.
Basic beam weapons fire automatically at an enemy doing maximum Thermal damage at near point-blank range and little damage at max range. Chaining Beam do the same but keep targeting enemies until a max of 3 targets have been hit. While Manual Aim Beams act as a standard point-and-shoot where the "bullet" go through all target instantaneously.

Base and Burst. Medium Slots and Manual Aim only.
Ballistics are Manual Aim weapon. They pierce their target with Kinetic energy and thus can hit many enemies. They travel at twice the speed of plasma weapons but are still much slower than Beams. Burst Ballistic weapons fire many weaker projectiles which deal somewhat more DPS at a huge added energy cost.

Base and Wave in Medium Slots / Dual and Shotgun in Heavy Slots. Manual Aim only.

Plasma weapons rapidly fire (slower than ballistic) projectiles dealing Thermal damage. Base Plasma weapons, while vastly inferior in pure stats to their ballistic cousins, can benefit from their high rate of fire and damage type. Wave Plasma fire in a huge ring around your ship dealing very little DPS.

Dual-Plasma are identical to normal Plasma but fire an extra projectile roughly doubling their DPS and EPS. Finally, Plasma Shotguns fire 4 extra projectile in a spread but fire much more slowly. This actually lower their DPS while making them more energy efficient.

Base and Swarm in Heavy Slots / Light Missiles and Light Swarm in Medium Slots. Auto-Aim only.
A basic missile fire a decently powerful (higher dps than Ballstic/Plasma but less than Beam) guided warhead toward an enemy. Susceptible to be shot down but has a small attack bonus to help deliver its damage. Other variety exist, such as a Torpedoes which do Area of Effect damage. More to come.

Virus are the best weapon to lower enemy stats (both attack and defense... refered to as "Debuff") while still doing excellent damage, even better than both Plasma and Ballistic base weapons at point-blank range. Essentially Beams that do a little less damage and deal EM type damage. More to come.

Almost exactly like Virus Weapons. Except instead of lowering attack they lower movement speed. They do Kinetic damage.

Pitiful in both damage and debuff capability, they nevertheless come in a wide variety of flavor including both Missile and Shockwave among others. More to come.

There's a bunch of fighters type in both heavy and medium slot variants. When their DPS is fully accounted for, they pack, by far, the most base damage of any other weapons in the game. In practice, they never reach that maximum potential and don't get boosted by as many statistics as normal weapons. Extremely powerful at their best nonetheless. More to come.

As the name imply those are the weapon that do the big booms. More to come.

Adds to your native ramming damage while reducing the ramming damage of your enemy. Formula should be interesting, is known to take thrust into consideration.

Mostly for fun.

Bombs can be aimed. Mines are stationary and explode on contact. Remote mines are exploded by you and deal a lot of potential DPS. More to come.

All weapons are listed at item level 25 in order to isolate them from base stats realistically. Link to table at the start of this section if you want to make a copy and toy with them.
DPS: Damage per second
EPS: Energy use per second
DPE: DPS / EPS -> Energy efficiency
As explained above weapon have both a base damage and damage per level component, those are to the right of this chart.

Planets update their information (and give their tribute) every 60 seconds. Planets (or entire races?) have a different timetable in which they start their 60 seconds, so they don't all happen at once.

These are relationship modifiers. The exact formula is unknown but it's comparatively useful. Click to embiggen.

A ton of change have been made to Drox 2!
Anything below is out of date.

Here I have curated some simple mods that make my life a little easier. They could make your life a little easier too. All or most of the QoL mods were originally created and released by Deogo/Deo.

At any time when reporting bugs and particularly now in early-access and using recycled mods affecting variables subject to change, there is a risk that the mods themselves will introduce bugs not present in the game. Be smart about this. If you're still going to report bugs, be mindful of saying you use those mods. Even better, try to first reproduce the bugs without the mods.

Download your chosen mod(s). Move or copy the compressed file(s) to "...\steamapps\common\Drox Operative 2\assets". The exact location will vary depending on where you installed the game. This given example is for a steam installation. You know you're in the good folder if you see the base game files called assets00x.

Feel free to leave a comment, like or subcribe either below and don't forget to sign-up for my onlyfans.

Three options for faster actions.

Bar for scanning anomalies and planet as well as opening objects last 1 second. [www.soldak.com]

Scanning anomalies and planet as well as opening objects is instantaneous.[www.soldak.com]

Fast Open and Identify by ScrObot, 0.25 second, include identify and planet actions like sabotage [www.soldak.com]

A sample of a random low difficulty game in progress in patch 8.01. This isn't meant to be scientific. It give a general, ballpark'ish idea of what to expect. Just me waiting outside of a sector with nothing to help me boost reputation.


Based on this we see that, in a vacuum, we can guesstimate that your average relationship will drop by roughly 1 point every 6 minute. Might sound scary, but it's really not. Keeping in movement and being constructive will keep yourself afloat reputation wise.

First, keep those facts in mind:

• Focus. You can't please everyone. Pick on or two races to care about. Pay attention not to help their enemies.
  
• The ancient are predisposed to hate lower races and (mostly) love each other. Placate them individually if you must but always expect the worst.
  
• Consider carefully who to befriend. Cortex have faster degradation, are manipulative and tend to make diplo mistakes. Human, Brunt and Drakk are aggressive and demanding. Dryad, Lithosoid are friendly and passive. Hive tend to both extremes. Fringes are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Then, act in consequence:

• Defend them Killing enemies near their planet are an easy way to boost reputations. There is no limit to how much rep you can gain from them assuming the monsters are there. Two planets nearby mean twice the rep gain. Do not, actually, take "protect" planet mission, which are absolutely horrible. Named monsters can give 3-10 reputation on kill + completing their associated quests.
  
• Free Trade. I personally free trade with everyone at all time. Will net roughly 50% less gold than trading manually and individually, but by trading everything at all time, will actually probably give you more gold in the end. Free trade, even with just one race, is a natural counter to degradation. Free info is an all-reputation alternative.
  
• Brute Force Kill Quests Killing everything will finish all the quests which in turn will help with your reputation. Accept all quests which have clear targets. They give the biggest reputation boost and can be searched for in the quest menu giving you convenient waypoints.
  
• Trade with them Emptying your inventory can net 0.5 to 2 relationship points. Buying a dozen booster item give roughly 1 relationship point.
  
• Kill their enemies Ancients have made enemies of all the lowers races? Killing them will net reputation with all the lower races. Same goes for any other race that declared many wars.
  
• Avoid Slow Quests Those are quests with long travel time, long completion time or multiple phase. Individually they might have merit and are worth doing if you have a reason to, but for reputation, it's not always efficient and rarely for more than a single targeted race. Examples: Curing diseases, terraforming, protecting a planet, ressurrecting races.

Note that many traits which are otherwise openly covered under their relevant icons in the reputation menu are not noted here.

Yellow 1 = 1 to 3 items with a magic bonus of 200. No gold, crew or tech drops.
Yellow 2 = Gold with a bonus of 1000 gold.
Yellow 3 = Nothing
Yellow 4 = Technology
Yellow 5 = Explosion
Yellow 6 = (25%) Teleport
Yellow 7 = Ambush
Yellow 8 = 500 experience (any modifier?)
Yellow 9 = Bonus Thrust
Yellow 10 = Regeneration
Yellow 11 = Energy
Yellow 12 = Radiation
Yellow 13 = Repair

Purple 1 = (300%) Radiation
Purple 2 = 1 to 3 items with a magic bonus of 200. No gold, crew or tech drops.
Purple 3 = Gold with a bonus of 1000 gold.
Purple 4 = Nothing

Red 1 = (300%) Teleport
Red 2 = 1 to 3 items with a magic bonus of 200. No gold, crew or tech drops.
Red 3 = Gold with a bonus of 1000 gold.
Red 4 = Nothing

Green 1 = (150%) 1 to 3 items with a magic bonus of 200. No gold, crew or tech drops.
Green 2 = (150%) Gold with a bonus of 1000 gold.
Green 3 = (200%) Nothing
Green 4 = Ambush

Blue 1 = (150%) Repair
Blue 2 = (150%) Regeneration
Blue 3 = (200%) Nothing
Blue 4 = Explosion

Take some of this with a grain of salt as it's not very tested but based on files and observations.

• You meet the same recurring races give or take a small amount of variance in each game.
  
• Subraces like Rebels can EMERGE if they are strong enough at the moment you win or lose the game. Based on point system, a single game in a small system can do, it not so difficult.
  
• (Organic only AKA not Utopian?) races can go EXTINCT if you wipe them from the sector enough. Roughly 5-10 times plus +% chance.
  
• Up to 10% of your reputation change remain up to a 2 points difference. Don't know how and if it stack.
  
• Diseases quests, named monster and pirates as well their dynamics persist up to a point.
  
• Those changes must happen before winning or losing to stick for the most part.

• If you're just starting out, stick to small, easily completed maps. Tiny, home planet settled.
  
• If you want to powergame, stick to small, easily completed maps. Tiny, home planet settled. See the pattern? Small sectors let you find the races you want quickly, lose no time exploring, have huge impact with little investment and avoid deadlocks. In general, killing other races is much harder than killing monsters. Big maps are good for a slug and a challenge but the rewards don't scale so don't do it for that.
  
• Accepting a mission put the location of the mission on the map, so when arriving in a new sector, accepting their quests will give you a good idea of the map layout and in which direction to fly to find map connections.
  
• Again, free trade. Free trade is good to maintain reputation and fight degradation.
  
• As a rule, yellow/medium slots are more valuable than red/heavy slots. Use red slots for things which benefit more such as armor, generators, thrusters if you're not scavenger and maybe a very high dps/low energy blaster.
  
• Race traits are awesome, don't underestimate them. Talking about race traits, drakks recruits missions amazing. A good crew can boost up to 4 different stats while marines are stronger together, get bonus attack from being Drakk and can shower you with loot.