Major Update 0.3.0.0 has been released!
Graphics Upgrade
All Factions now have portrait art. AI portraits show up when you speak to them, user portraits show up in the new game screen.
Main menu and new game screens have new background art.
A number of models replaced or polished visually.
Screen space ambient occlusion shading added, which improves visual quality of all structures and terrain in game.
Buildings, especially producers, have more glow and dynamic lighting.
Interface graphics have been polished.
Build Templates
Rather than simply duplicating small groups, you can now save off a group of structures as a Build Template, and use it later. Build Templates can be used between different save files. You can also rotate your build templates how you see fit.
Vehicle Automation Improvements
Cargo vehicle automation is improved. Cargo vehicles will go through cycles of gather and distribute in order to maximize inventory space usage. They now prioritize non-warehouses first, assuming non-warehouses are automation-enabled.
Additionally, endpoints like research labs and prefabricators have an option to allow auto-delivery directly from vehicles, similar to turrets and upgraders. Powerplants which require inputs also have this option now too.
Gather Directly from Excavators
Your cargo vehicles can now gather directly from mining vehicles. You can manually assign a cargo vehicle to a mining vehicle. There is a new automation mode on cargo vehicles for auto-gathering from mining vehicles which do not have a dropoff point assigned.
There is a new mining vehicle, the Heavy Excavator, which functions like a regular excavator, but moves extremely slow and holds far more capacity, designed for being gathered directly from.
Performance
The game engine has been rewritten to utilize the Entity Component System (ECS) architecture. This has led to performance gains (cpu-side) across all gameplay, though gains are most prevalent in late game factories with huge numbers of items.
Quality of Life
Selecting any structure to build shows a popup which describes what that building does before you place it.
Allies and neutral factions avoid your territory. Particularly helpful during wartime when their vehicles are exploding all around.
You can build Lake Bridges from the shore to your Lakeside Extractors, and then either run vehicles or Maglev Tubes across those bridges. This removes the need to use land reclamation to alter your lakes and rivers.
Prefabricators show how many structures you have stored.
Building or selecting a turret or radar shows the range of all similar buildings.
Being unable to place anything in build, relocate, duplicate, or other modes sends you a notification explaining why.
Labels of anything quick-located or renamed will show up on the zoomed-out view.
[h2]And More![/h2]
And many more smaller ui tweaks, gameplay changes, graphics tweaks, bug fixes, and crash fixes.
[h3]Note about Saved Games[/h3]
Save data layout has changed. Save files will still work from version 0.2.x.x, but you will want to save them in 0.3.x.x, otherwise they may stop working in later versions.
Also, some vehicle automation settings from 0.2.x.x will be reset and you will need to set them again.
Full Changelist
Graphics
- Screen space ambient occlusion shader implemented.
- All factions have new portrait art.
- New models for Storehouse, Warehouse, Supply Depot, Stackable Storehouse, Stackable Warehouse, Prefabricator.
- Numerous existing models altered and improved.
- Production structures have dynamic lights on, and lighting will pulsate as they work. Powerline lights pulse as well.
- Terrain textures improved.
- Main menu screens have new background art.
- New loading splash screens.
- UI gfx have been touched up.
- Smelter/forge/etc. floor glow made much more prominent.
- Improved particle fx graphics.
Gameplay
- You can now set cargo trucks and cargo quadcopters to manually gather resources directly from mining vehicles.
- New unit, Heavy Excavator, similar to regular excavator, but moves extremely slow and carries far more. Designed to pair with gathering resources directly with trucks.
- Normal excavators move slightly faster.
- You can now build Lake Bridges, which allow vehicles and tubes to cross over lakes. This makes it much easier to pull hydrocarbons from Lakeside Extractors via tubes. Requires Steel or later materials.
- Walls are much stronger.
- Nerfed subsurface wells significantly in favor of atmospheric extractors and lakeside extractors.
- The Orbital Exchange's special ability can never give you more money than you get from a mission plus bonus.
- Rebels second main mission reward buffed.
- More varied faction dialogue.
- Early game missions are tweaked to have fewer jumps up the tech tree for new players.
- A number of recipes tweaked and rebalanced.
AI
- Allies and neutral factions keep their land vehicles out of your territory. Useful when they are going to war with each other, at worst, you'll only have to worry about explosions at the edge of your territory (unless dealing with enemy factions).
- New cargo vehicle automation mode for auto-gathering from mining vehicles which do not already have a set dropoff point.
- Improvements to automated cargo vehicle decision making. Cargo vehicles now go through cycles of gather and deliver, which makes them fill up as much as possible from as many sources before delivering to as many sources as it can. This can yield inefficient setups if your gather points are far away from each other, but this is up to the player to optimize using filtering. It does yield much greater efficiency in most cases though, especially when dealing with resupplying gun turrets, for instance.
- Default cargo automation mode now gathers in a demand-oriented manner. Non-default automation (gather from miners, gather from external sources) are supply-oriented.
- Default cargo automation mode round robins to prevent resource starvation from demanders. Non-default cargo automation modes gathers from nearest.
- Non-warehouses are prioritized over warehouses for automated cargo vehicles.
- Endpoints like research labs and prefabricators have an option to allow auto-delivery directly from vehicles, similar to turrets and upgraders now. Powerplants which require inputs also have this option now too.
UI
- You can make Build Templates of buildings, which functions similar to Duplicate, but it instead saves these templates. These nameable templates can then be used across different save games, or across the same save without needing to reference the original setup. These can be rotated as well.
- Building mode immediately shows you info about whatever you are building, same as what you can find in infolinks. You no longer need to build things to see what they do, it will tell you beforehand.
- Much more info about each building is shown now in building mode and in infolinks.
- You can always select a structure build mode, even if you can't afford it or don't have enough stored, simply to see the build mode info.
- Modes such as Duplicate/Relocate/etc. now show additional information about the current mode.
- Explosions always tell you what you were killed by.
- Infolinks has more info on everything. Rent costs, maintenance costs, upgrader input consumption times, etc.
- Better errors for non-cargo vehicles whenever there are issues with dropoff or pickup. Better errors in general for all vehicles.
- Prefabricators/garages/hangers put requested items at the very top of the list.
- 2D Marquee select for structures in special modes (like relocate, create template, etc.) highlights structures within the selection.
- Many UI paths and workflows made consistent with each other.
- You can marquee select units in the zoomed out view.
- Ammo and Augmentations are split out into separate headers amongst all good types.
- Byproducts in infolinks fixed to show actual recipes to produce them.
- Prefabricator UI shows how much of each structure is stored.
- Building or selecting a turret or radar shows the range of all similar buildings.
- Labels of anything quick-located/renamed will show up on the zoomed-out view.
Other
- Bug fix - Buying land not refreshing build requests.
- Bug fix - Many small ui fixes.
- Bug fix - Fixed Squatter habitats being invincible sometimes.
- Bug fix - Prevent relocating structures out from under units.
- Bug fix - Fixed duplication not working in seemingly random cases.
- Bug fix - Storages counting incoming goods wrong for trucks fixed.
- Bug fix - Inventory UIs not replenishing properly.
- Bug fix - Powerplant UIs not showing contents.
- Bug fix - Tube colors not updating properly.
- Bug fix - Producer limits serializing improperly.
- Bug fix - Dangerous science mode leaves behind wreckage fixed.
- Crash fix - Crash on ordering about gun turrets.
- Crash fix - Crash with tubes entering double placed structures.
- Crash fix - Rare crash on AI building stuff.
- Crash fix - Crash on returning selected unit from the vehicle tracker menu.
- Crash fix - Partially deleting tube wreckage.
- Performance - Engine worked to use Entity Component System. Provides much better CPU-side performance. Improvements are most significant between paused and unpaused.
- Performance - Many smaller cpu-side performance improvements through a variety of changes.
- Performance - Some minor graphics optimizations.