Hello everyone, I'm back with a dev diary for Puffin Planes. I'll start posting occasional dev diaries instead of posting every single preview update as an announcement; this will help keep the library view cleaner. I'll still try to post patch notes to Steam and Discord though. By the way, did I mention that the game's on sale? Actually, I don't know why I'm mentioning this. If you are reading this dev diary then you probably already own the game. Maybe you can buy it for a friend? Anyways...

Coming Soon in v17.1

(And currently available on the preview branch)

New Main Menu

In order to redo the main menu windows, I first needed to reconfigure the main menu so that there was more space for them. To accomplish this I moved the action buttons over to the side.

Airline customization

You may have spotted in the previous picture a new "Airlines" tab in the New Game menu. This lets you customize the airline! You can now customize a few additional settings such as the bird and the start location.

Advanced game rule customization

I added many more game rules for you all to customize. I know I can't satisfy everyone's preference for how they want to play the game, so I thought I would at least give everyone more choice.

Loans and your CRANE Score

You heard that right: loans! These are definitely not balanced yet, I'm afraid. In fact the whole v17.1 update is probably unbalanced as heck right now. But hopefully, armed with the new game rule customization options, I can get some feedback from playtesters on the appropriate balance this new mechanic.

Full v17.1-pre4 Patch Notes

Features:

- New "Expand Airport" button on the Infrastructure GUI panel that allows you to add another building slot.

- Your airline now has a CRANE rating. This will affect how eager lenders are to give you money.

- There are four new loans available for you to take out.

- Whenever manufacturers launch a new model/block, they will offer discounts to each airline on their first 5 or 10 orders.

- Tons of new game settings including over features like buyouts, plane maintenance speed, and so much more.

- Can now customize individual airlines before game start.

Changes:

- Bulk discount has been reduced from 20% to 15% of the plane cost.

- Increased fuel efficiency of the Atto from 0.85 to 0.95

- Reduced upkeep miles cost from 8/health to 7/health

- Inflation is now ~25% of what it used to be. The old "Normal" inflation is now the new "High", for comparison. The idea is to try and increase plane costs and add early-game loans rather than rely on inflation for a more engaging early-mid game.

- Rebalanced plane costs; smaller planes increased around ~2x, larger planes between ~3-5x.

- Production line base capacity has been nerfed from 8/hr to 6/hr; I felt planes were being built too quickly. But starting efficiency has been boosted to 100% to compensate at least at the immediate start of the game.

- AI will now be more aggressive in stockpiling planes.

- Moderately decreased the cost for manufacturers to open new production lines.

Bugfixes:

- Fixed the Comfort chart.