Major Update 0.9.0.0 Released!
Update 0.9.0.0 is out. With Heating Dynamics, Weather Dynamics, Custom Landing Zones, and much more, this update is huge! It also makes some significant improvements to the Population Dynamics added in the previous update.
[h2]Heat Dynamics[/h2]
Heating and cooling now uses a more complex simulation. Structures heat or cool based on the wind convection, ground conduction, and heat radiation.
Some structures now overheat and shutdown, while others, like habitats and farms, need to stay warm, otherwise workers will get unhappy and leave.
Habitats, Farms, and other population-related structures now have an internal heating system which dynamically adjusts to get the perfect temperature, but if the insulation is not good enough, it may not be able to keep up with Titan's frigid temperatures.
To better help improve heating and cooling, there are several different heat exchanger floors, which greatly improve dissipation of heat, several different insulator floors and insulator augmentations, which can hold in heat. Cooling Towers can now take in many different kinds of coolants, each of which has different cooling capabilities. A new Heating System structure can pump additional heat into structures which need it.
[h2]Weather Dynamics[/h2]
Hydrocarbon rain is here at last! Rain clouds will form over your factory from time to time, and the rain will clear pollution significantly when it falls. Rain also can alter the temperature of your factory, heating up your factory when it is cold, or cooling it down when it is overheating. Hydrocarbon snow is also another possibility. The snow can cool down your factory somewhat. Cloud seeders now can help accelerate the formation of rain or snow clouds as well.
Wind dynamics have been changed significantly.
[h2]Custom Landing Zones[/h2]
Not a fan of night time? Well, now you can choose to start your new game at Titan's North Pole, which is awash in perpetual daylight. Great for solar power, not so great for wind power and cooling.
You can stick to the Northern Regions, which is the default, but now also available is Titan's Equator, which has equally long days and nights, giving better wind power and cooling.
And finally, if you want a more challenging experience, try Titan's South Pole, set in perpetual darkness except for Saturn's gleam behind the thick atmosphere.
[h2]Graphics Improvements[/h2]
The main menu screen now features a dynamic scene of the space station you deploy from in low orbit over Titan.
Although the atmosphere is too thick to see Saturn, at night, when Saturn is brightest, it produces a yellowish gleam in the sky that illuminates the world at night better.
Many smaller graphics improvements have been made as well. Fog is less flat looking. Lakes and shiny surfaces no longer flash so brightly at dusk and dawn when you are looking into the sun. Explosions have been improved. Terrain has been tweaked to look better. Spacecraft radiators generate light now. Meteors have been completely reworked visually.
[h2]Population Dynamics Improvements[/h2]
You can subscribe to food purchases from the Conflux Markets, rather than always go back to purchase it whenever you run low. Same for all necessities.
You can, for a price, subscribe to Conflux Market auto-deliveries of necessities directly to your headquarters. They will send a Cargo Copter every so often to drop off food and the like, as long as you have space in your headquarters.
There is a new Stash structure, which is where all resources will go when you stash them from anywhere. You always get 1, even if it is destroyed. Because this splits the stashing function from the headquarters, your headquarters now only stores food, water, medicine, and oxygen, and it has a reserved capacity for each necessity. This prevents your headquarters from ever getting overfull of one necessity and being unable to hold others.
You can now hire workers directly from your HUD, from the same button where you layoff workers, rather than talking directly to each faction. If you do so, you will hire from the faction that is the cheapest to hire from (which will vary based on how much each faction likes you).
Notifications involving your workers leaving or about to leave your factory will now appear front and center of your screen so they're harder to miss. Headquarters now give more warnings about unhappy population as well.
When building a structure that requires workers, a line to the nearest habitats will show to help you better plan your factory, and habitats will show a line to all nearby structures requiring workers when you are about to place them.
Habitats now store twice as much as they need, in case they are far from a necessity source.
[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]
Corporate fees and subsidies have been reduced so that it is now ideal to pay off your loan as soon as possible (rather than previously, where it was cheaper to delay payments as long as possible).
On easier difficulties, you need fewer necessities. You can also alter this on custom difficulties.
On Sandbox difficulty, workers don't leave if they are unhappy. Instead they just complain.
The Meteors Crisis spawns fewer meteors in early to mid game.
Early game in general has been made slightly easier.
[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]
You can now pin resources to your main HUD, which will tell you how many each resource exists across your entire factory. This lets you create an "inventory" which allows you to instantly know at a glance what you have, and whether there are any blockages, or unexpected losses.
Setting External Pickups on your cargo transports will disable filters, and allow you to pick up everything, so you won't need a dozen different cargo vehicles working on picking up salvage.
You can set exact storage caps on warehouses for each different resource if you want exact control over how many resources go into each warehouse. The original behavior remains there too if you want to simply use the equal whitelist cap with a number of dummy goods.
You can also better check on the heat of your structures with the Temperature View Mode now, and you can determine how much heat is being lost through convection, conduction, and radiation.
[h3]Full Changelist[/h3]
0.9.0.0 (6/25/2024)
Gameplay
- Hydrocarbon rain added. Rain clouds form every so often and rain all over your factory, which greatly reduces pollution. Rain clouds can heat up or cool your factory, depending on its current ambient temperature.
- Hydrocarbon snow added as well. Snow clouds can sometimes form over your factory too, which can cool down your factory slightly.
- Cloud Seeders now actually seed clouds. Adding them to your factory increases the frequency with which clouds form, and increases the chances they form in the area around your cloud seeder.
- Cloud Seeders no longer simply reduce pollution as they used to do. They will need to form a cloud to do so.
- Start Landing Zones. Four landing zones (Northern Region, North Pole, South Pole, and Equator) can be chosen at game start, each of which vary your latitude on Titan, each of which yields very different day and night cycles. The cycles significantly alter how solar power, wind power, and heating/cooling will work.
- Corporate Fees and Subsidies are reduced. They are now equal to your starting loan payments. This means it's better to pay off your loan as soon as possible. The upkeep will be lower if you pay off your loan (rather than before, where paying off 9/10 of your loan was optimal). This greatly reduces the difficulty in that part of the game.
- Reduced the number of meteors during a crisis.
- Amount of necessities such as food and oxygen needed now scales by difficulty. On easy and sandbox, it is reduced to 50%. This can also be customized on custom difficulty as well.
- On Sandbox difficulty, workers don't leave if they are unhappy (they just complain).
- Whenever your workers are set to leave because they don't have the right necessities, the Conflux Market will send you a message reminding you that you can buy necessities off of them. They also restock with necessities at this point too.
- Large/Mega producers now have 3 augmentation slots (instead of 2).
- Large/Mega producers are now cheaper to maintain than their smaller variants.
- Optimizer is better at improving production speed.
- Supercomputer is better at improving research speed.
- Catalyst Augmentation is better at improving production/research speed.
- Food can now be produced immediately at Farms. You don't need to research Refineries and produce Agrochemicals. However, food produced without agrochemicals is extremely inefficient, but it can be done.
- There is a new Stash structure, which is where all resources will go when you stash them from anywhere. You always get 1, even if it is destroyed. Because this splits the stashing function from the headquarters, your headquarters now only stores food, water, medicine, and oxygen, and now it has a reserved capacity for each necessity. This prevents your headquarters from ever getting overfull of one necessity and being unable to hold others.
- Removed counterfeit artifacts ability from Saturn's Chosen.
- Habitats now store twice as much as they need, in case they are far from a necessity source.
- Tweaked prices of various buildings.
- Heating and cooling now uses a more complex simulation. Structures heat or cool based on the wind convection, ground conduction, and heat radiation.
- Reworked advection, wind, and temperature simulations.
- Convection is increased based on wind speed.
- Structures can now overheat and shutdown.
- Habitats need to stay within a temperature range, otherwise workers will get unhappy and possibly leave. Habitats now have a heating system which dynamically adjusts to get the perfect temperature, but if the insulation is not good enough, it may not be able to keep up with Titan's frigid temperatures.
- All population related structures have a narrow range they must stay in.
- Farms and Oxygen Gardens must also be carefully kept within a temperature range, otherwise the plants will die.
- Population-related structures have built-in internal heaters that consume variable amounts of power based on how cold the structure is. Farms and Oxygen Gardens do as well.
- Certain producers and science facilities now have a minimum temperature to operate. When working, they have a heater to heat them to the minimum temperature before they can begin producing things.
- Constructed buildings are built hot, and then cool down to the ambient temperature.
- There are now several heat exchanger floors, each of which alter the thermal conductivity of the structures above them, which can heavily improve heat dissipation.
- There are also several different insulator floors. Each alters the thermal conductivity of structures above them in the insulator range.
- There are now several Insulation Augmentations. Each now alters the wall material of structures it is added to, causing those structures to lose less heat to wind and ambient temperatures.
- Cooling Towers now dump a portion of excess heat produced from a structure directly into the atmosphere. The amount of heat it dumps scales on how much coolant is fed into the tower. If a producer generates tons of heat, the coolant will be spent far quicker.
- Cooling Towers can now take in different kinds of coolant. Each will have a different effect on how well the tower will cool.
- New Heating System structure. An upgrader that converts power into heat and heats anything it touches, but some of the heat stays in the heating system. It can also become overheated in this way.
- Spacecraft exhaust plumes dump heat into the atmosphere when landing and taking off.
- First ruin you pick up in a new game is now always a map.
AI
- You can subscribe to food purchases from the Conflux Markets, rather than always go back to purchase it whenever you run low. Same for all necessities.
- You can, for a price, subscribe to Conflux Market auto-deliveries of necessities directly to your headquarters. They will send a Cargo Copter every so often to drop off food and the like, as long as you have space in your headquarters.
- Only the Conflux Market will sell you necessities now.
- Allies will start even closer to your start location so as not to get into a struggle with the Marauder faction.
- AI will request much larger power amounts to heat their buildings.
- Reduced power markup bonus.
Graphics
- The main menu has been updated with a dynamic main menu showing the space station in orbit over Titan, and Saturn in the background as well.
- Although the atmosphere is too thick to see Saturn, at night, when Saturn is brightest, there is a yellowish gleam in the sky that illuminates night time better.
- Camera can be tilted slightly upwards.
- Fog is much less flat looking now.
- Movement of the sun in the sky is correct now, matching Saturn in summertime, so Titan in the north gets the longest day in the Saturnian year.
- Distance to Saturn varies due to Titan's orbital eccentricity now.
- Spacecraft radiators generate light now (only on high graphics settings).
- Improved explosion FX. Shockwave is brighter, the fireball is less uniform, and the smoke lingers longer.
- Improved meteor FX significantly.
- General dust FX improved.
- Hydrocarbon lakes and terrain no longer get that bright flashing at dusk and dawn. Specular highlights are toned down at sunset / sunrise.
- Terrain tweaked to look better.
UI
- You can now pin resources to your main HUD, which lets you see how many resources of various types you have at a glance.
- The Layoff Button in the main HUD now lets you hire directly, rather than talking to another faction. If you choose to hire from that button, it will simply pay the cheapest faction for workers.
- The temperature view now colors in structures with their temperature. It also lets you know that structure's temperature through the hover.
- In temperature view mode, hovering over a structure will let you know the heat that it is losing to conduction, convection, and radiation.
- User Selected View always overrides the view of the selected structure.
- Pollution reduced by clouds formed from a cloud seeder now record pollution removed in your stats.
- When building a structure that requires workers, a line to the nearest habitats will show to help you better plan your factory, and habitats will show a line to all nearby structures requiring workers when you are about to place them.
- Power UI lines are now yellow, worker UI lines are purple.
- Notifications involving your workers leaving or about to leave your factory will now appear front and center of your screen so you won't miss them.
- Headquarters now give more warnings about unhappy population.
- Setting External Pickups on your cargo transports will disable filters, and allow you to pick up everything, so you won't need a dozen different cargo vehicles working on picking up salvage.
- You can set exact storage caps on warehouse for each different resource if you want exact control over how many resources goes into each warehouse. The original behavior remains there too if you want to simply use the equal whitelist cap with dummy values.
- Removed tutorial checkbox from new game screen.
- Many structures have a heating ui section now.
- Floors have been redistributed to all action menus, because there are so many.
- Unassigned population is specifically mentioned as being at the headquarters in error messages.
- Buying a permit or other item from another faction has the option to return to that faction's store if they have it.
- Added a tutorial for hiring workers.
- Habitat tutorial is before the mining tutorial now.
- Various other improvements to existing tutorials.
- Added a new button in the bottom bar for heating and cooling items.
- Infolinks shows min and max temperature limits.
- Added limits to size of marquee delete/relocate.
- Many other minor UI fixes.
Other
- Game starts in fullscreen the first time you play it.
- Bug fix - Fixed a rare case where start locations were ending up with no good starting resources for Wire.
- Bug fix - Infolinks showing wrong maintenance costs.
- Bug fix - Upgraders complaining about nothing to upgrade when they were just out of inputs, off, or otherwise had a different issue.
- Bug fix - Fixed large producers having worse pollution efficiency than small producers.
- Bug fix - Fixed normals of certain terrain types being slanted incorrectly.
- Bug fix - Fixed normals being upside down in certain cases.
- Bug fix - Rotations causing weird lighting in certain cases.
- Bug fix - Particles sticking around between games.
- Bug fix - Factions that become hostile to you due to the main mission will no longer allow you to visit their store or chat with them.
- Bug fix - Marauders running out of ammo and doing nothing about it.
- Bug fix - Symmetric hotspots would sometimes produce nearly zero temperature gradient, and thus cause near zero wind.
- Bug fix - Fixed particle FX wind drag being wrong.
- Bug fix - Fixed particles showing up on the minimap.
- Bug fix - Fixed meteors not having lights.
- Bug fix - Fixed particles flickering at dusk and dawn.
- Bug fix - Powerline ui showing up for the wrong structures.
- Bug fix - Fixed invalid-build-squares UI showing up while a structure is being built.
- Bug fix - Fixed odd black artifacts appearing on buildings under certain angles of sunlight.
- Bug fix - Bankruptcy status bar colors were wrong.
- Bug fix - Fixed build templates not loading in certain rare cases.
- Bug fix - Fixed discrepancies in costs reported vs costs paid.
- Crash fix - Crash when selecting a structure where certain specific good types are going to.
- Crash fix - Rare pathing crash from loading bad data.
- Crash fix - Rare crash when using patrolling vehicles with a power-of-two number of nodes.
- Crash fix - Fixed a crash when placing or deleting a maglev tube in a large, complex maglev setup.
- General performance optimizations made.
- Fixed a number of UI-related memory leaks.