Hi everyone!

Today we want to talk to you about some of our next goals regarding early game, overall progression and upcoming updates.

Early Game & Military Tiers

In the current version of the game the early progression is quite open and unfocused.
After unlocking the second tier of the construction firm you already have almost full access to 7 out of 12 buildings without having completed even the first military tier.
This mainly served the purpose of testing during the early alpha and beta stages of the game during the pre-steam development phase as it allowed a faster access to a broader amount of features that the game offers.

Many new players are easily overwhelmed by the amount of content unlocked at the same time compared to existing players who got used to the old content as new content was gradually introduced during development.

That’s why the next updates are going to focus on implementing the core progression loop of the game with a more adequate pacing and the actually planned prestige rewards for increasing the military tier.
The construction firm will receive a few more tiers while higher building tiers will be locked behind the current tier of the construction firm which is in turn already limited by the military tier.
Additionally we are going to shorten the overall time it takes to unlock the Headquarters building.

Military Perks

Along with the changes mentioned in the previous paragraph, we are going to introduce the new military tier prestige reward system or in short "Military Perks".
After each military tier you will get one point you can invest into an additional set of skills that will either decrease the penalty of the next military tier prestige or unlock a new set of features to aid you in your progress. There will be an equal amount of perks than there are military tiers so you will be able to max them out.

Workers (Pre-AI Automation)

We already started working on the previously announced pre-AI automation.
Upon reaching military tier 1 in one of the following updates, you will unlock "Workers" which will mainly serve as an automatic workforce to help you manage your town.

Workers are neither a replacement nor a substitution for the AI but rather an addition as they are able to perform tasks in the Town during an active Tower Testing run - although the tasks are much simpler than what the AI could accomplish.
Their implementation is pretty generic so they can be used to virtually do anything in future mods for the game.


As always we are curious to hear what you think!

Changelog

New Stuff

• added new help page for Water Experiment
  
• added manual skip button (Only active if autoskip is off)
  
• added AI impulse "Open: Labaratory"
  
• added AI impulse "Open: Construction Firm"
  
• added AI impulse "Open: Statue Of Cubos"
  
• added AI impulse "Open: Arcade"
  
• added AI impulse "Open: Shipyard"
  
• added AI impulse "Open: Trading Post"
  
• added AI impulse "Open: Headquarters"
  

Changes

• reduced goals for the first 10 prestiges in Water Experiment to make the entry less rough
  
• changed default value of strings to empty string ("") instead of null for AI strings
  
• Town Asset UI will now only be available after unlocking at least one Town Asset
  
• removed a bunch of unused assets to reduce size
  
• removed clamp from formula that prevented speed and amount bonus bars of infinity stones from ticking more than once per frame
  

Fixes

• minor fix to prevent material shader in the Light Experiment from crashing due to negative color values
  
• fixed Water Experiment not progressing offline
  
• fixed Earth Experiment stability upgrade not counting properly
  

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