Hi everyone, Captain Marek speaking and I am very excited to announce that our Beta was released today! In this post I will give you a brief overview of what is new. If you prefer to just read the patch notes, they are at the bottom of this post
New content
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New maps
Until now, the game could be played only on one map. In the last Captain’s diary #10 we described serialization infrastructure revamp and how that enabled support for playing on different maps.
With that support, we have designed three brand-new maps of various difficulties that will challenge you in different ways:
The Beach
Starting on a sandy beach, there is plenty of space to build a factory, but farms cannot be built on sand, so the challenge is with their constrained placement. Another challenge is that there is not much space to build cargo docks and the main island has tall mountains around the perimeter, so one will need to either make an artificial reef or use space farther out.
Golden Peak
Has a tall peak in the middle made of gold ore! This map is slightly tricky due to its tall mountain in the center formed by many platforms on different heights that need to be connected via ramps to get access. Expanding the buildable land by mining the mountain and dumping rocks into the ocean is a vital strategy here.
You shall not pass
An experimental map to test your skills. The start location is in a very small and constrained valley, and while you have huge amounts of resources, you need to reach the top plateau before you run out of coal and wood. After reaching the top, you are rewarded with a large area for building a vast factory so you can utilize all the resources available to you. This map is for experts only.
Nuclear power
When coal powerplant no longer scales, now you have another option: Nuclear power! But make sure you always have enough cooling water and don't let the reactor overheat! Below you can see 12 MW setup!
Arc furnace
Were you wondering where will all the new power from nuclear powerplant go? Arc furnace is one example. The tier 2 will consume whopping 2MW of power! However, its cooling capabilities allows salvaging some of the power back.
Settlement tier 3
Larger factories needs more people. Tier 3 housing provides nearly double capacity compared to tier 2. Here are some tier 3 settlement houses next to tier 1 and 2.
Game difficulties and new game configuration
We've got lots of feedback from alpha that it is too easy/hard. To please as many players as possible we have implemented difficulty modes. Currently, there are three modes. The middle one is how we play and balance the game, and the other ones are made to make the games easier or on the contrary, more challenging. We are looking forward to seeing how this evolves. We will rely on our beta community feedback to fine-tune the difficulties and maybe introduce extra experimental modes.
Anaerobic digester
We have added an anaerobic digester. This machine converts food, waste water, and sludge (product of water treatment) into biogas and digestate. Biogas can be used to power a boiler or to produce diesel fuel. And digestate is a valuable fertilizer.
Desalinator
We have also introduced a new desalinator to provide players with independence on coal. The new one takes steam instead (any kind of steam). This gets exciting with a combination of alternative sources of energy.
New boilers
Talking about alternative sources of energy, we have added many more boilers that can burn pretty much anything that is flammable, including waste products from crude oil refining. On top of that there is a new an electric boiler!
Patch notes
There is more new content than I can fit in this post, so feel free to read through the detailed patch notes below.
Note: this is list of all changes since the last alpha patch.
New soundtrack
- 64 minutes of industrial-themed music!
Maps
- 3 brand new maps for Beta from advanced to a challenging one.
- Ability to parametrize maps from the UI, such as forest size, resources size, cliff height.
- Added limestone as a mineable terrain material. It is primarily used for concrete production but has many other uses throughout the factory.
- Improved ores deposit shapes to make them easier to mine.
- Grass is now generated over flat areas of the rocky terrain for nicer looking maps. Also, many deposits are now partially covered by rock.
Mining and dumping
- Terrain designations size reduced from 6x6 to 4x4. This allows greater flexibility when designing mines and allows steeper ramps.
- Improved excavators mining logic, allowed mining/dumping across designation borders, and maximized excavator load per dig.
- Increased mining speed of plain rock by 30% to make it easier to remove while mining resources.
Game difficulties
- It is now possible to choose game difficulty when creating a new game. There are 3 presets and we allow players to create their own unique experience by tweaking any of the existing options.
Priority system
- The player can now set a general priority for each machine & building to affect their consumption of electricity, workers, maintenance, and unity. This also affects cargo priority for logistics. Some entities such as storages have dedicated priority configurations.
- A dedicated set of priorities for electricity generation. With this system players can now build backup electricity generation.
Vehicles navigation redesign
- Our original navigation for vehicles had several smart auto-recovery systems in case vehicles got lost. This turned out to be too tricky to grasp for players and sometimes this system was confused as bugs. We have removed automated recoveries and now we let players deal with it while providing them a recovery action (costs Unity).
Quick-build & trading
- Quick-build no longer “cheats” new materials. It was changed to “quick-delivery” so it instantly delivers missing materials that the player already has.
- To reduce hard-locks (especially in the early game), the player starts with an already discovered village that enables them to trade important commodities. Added a new building called “trading dock” to facilitate goods delivery and to make trading more discoverable and tangible.
New content
- Blast Furnace II (advanced smelting)
- Arc furnace I & Arc furnace II
- Silicon reactor
- polymerization plant (plastic production)
- Hydrogen reforming
- Power production
- Nuclear reactor
- Nuclear waste storage
- Uranium enrichment facility
- Spent fuel storage
- HP & LP turbines tier II
- Large cooling tower
- Gas and electric boilers
- Rotary kiln & cement production
- Anaerobic digester
- Greenhouse II
- Ship bridge III
- Housing III
- Household electronics module for settlement
- New early game buildings: Research Lab tier 0, Maintenance depot tier 0 - these help to reduce initial demands in the early game
- New products: Limestone, Graphite, UraniumOre, YellowCake, UraniumPellets, UraniumRod, SpentFuel, ToxicSlurry, Ammonia, CarbonDioxide, Cement, PCB, Gravel, Digestate, Sludge, FilterMedia,
Existing chains redesigns
- New thermal desalinatior that no longer requires coal but uses steam. It provides the ability to utilize nuclear power or waste steam for desalination.
- Crude oil distillation was redesigned to follow more closely real processes. Also, its bi-products can now be burned in a gas boiler.
- Introduced sulfur to decouple sour water from acid. Also a sulfur mine was added to the world map. This enables players to scale acid independently of oil production.
- Removed acid recycling. Instead, sulfur can be neutralized using limestone.
- Advanced smelting enables the addition of extra materials into smelting to increase the efficiency.
- Salt can be now produced directly without the need to produce brine, it just takes longer.
- Fertilizer production via hydrogen is now much more expensive. But it is still cheap when made from oil chain via ammonia.
- Copper electrolysis can work with just water (but yields less pure copper). This removes the oil chain as a blocker for copper production that was causing hard locks.
- Redesigned Construction parts: CPs I requires concrete, CPs II requires copper, CP3 III requires steel.
New production chains
- Introduced fuel gas that can be made in anaerobic digester. This enables the recycling of sludge from the settlement (makes water treatment even more beneficial). Gas can be processed to diesel via a cracking unit.
- Electronics production, household electronics, maintenance II.
Balancing
- Maintenance significantly reduced for idle machines & vehicles.
- Exhaust scrubber is now more beneficial (more power, more useful resources returned).
- Higher settlement tiers come with a slight increase in services consumption.
- Maintenance depots now produce more frequently.
Performance improvements
- Greatly reduced game save duration (less lag during auto-save).
- 5x improved rendering performance of terrain designations (was noticeable for large designated areas) and made their bookkeeping 100x faster.
Other changes
- World map and weather are now fully randomized (based on a few predefined constraints) and players can configure game seed in the new game wizard.
- Added a new edict that increases settlement services consumption for extra Unity.
Fixes
- Fixed that shortcuts did not close windows that they opened.
- Fixed clipped windows on the main screen for smaller resolutions.
- Improvements in pathfinding.
- Removed crushed concrete, digging into concrete returns rock instead.
- Fixed cloning tool that did not deactivate in some cases.
Thank you so much for reading and see you next time!
Captain Marek out.
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