Factory Town Idle News

[h2]Improvements:[/h2]

• Added Italian language localization
  
• Changed ‘Scroll Up’ and ‘Scroll Down’ hotkeys from Q and E to A and Z, to prevent overlaps with existing menu hotkeys. In addition, the keys can be held down to scroll repeatedly. (Page Up and Page Down are also mapped to this function.)
  

[h2]Balance Changes:[/h2]

• Resources are no longer added when their capacity expands, as it was possible to exploit by adding/removing associated perks
  
• Removed slightly confusing quest requirements for higher levels of “Research Speed” upgrade. They were intended to prevent displaying these levels before the type of coin used to purchases these levels was available. But they were not formatted well and didn’t serve much purpose. Now all levels of this upgrade cost Yellow Coins and have no additional requirements besides completing certain amounts of research globally.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Was possible to minimize the main Markets or Trading header, causing all rows to disappear without an obvious way to make them visible again
  
• Game will respond to launch arg “-windowed” to launch in window mode instead of exclusive fullscreen (to fix issues where game would not display properly in exclusive fullscreen, causing in-game windowed mode option to be inaccessible)
  
• Also added “-fullscreen” launch arg that sets to exclusive fullscreen
  
• Added logic to help prevent ‘One Week’ and ‘One Month’ achievements from triggering early
  
• Was able to click on locked Biome modifier icons to see the locked info
  
• Water Wheel research was required on all recipes that use power, even though power can now be traded between towns. This was causing an odd situation where the Machine Shop or Mana Transmitter could be unlocked but no recipes were visible for them.
  
• Changing towns (with ctrl+left or right arrow keys) while the Town Perks menu was open would not update that menu’s displayed town
  
• Was able to exceed building limits (e.g. for biome-specific buildings that are capped based on town level) using the build-multiple commands
  

Hi again, I'm happy to announce that Factory Town Idle has graduated from Early Access and is now available as as full 1.0 release!

A huge thanks to all the players who participated in the early Playtest and Early Access versions, and in particular those that offered all the extremely valuable feedback & bug reports. I literally could not have gotten the game to this state without you!

If you don't already have the game, it now has a 30% launch discount and is part of Steam's Economy and Capitalism Fest that just started.

I have more updates planned post-launch, so keep those suggestions coming. Cheers!

Erik

[h2]Misc Improvements[/h2]

• More details provided in Market Fulfillment tooltip, specifically including descriptive rows for things that modify oversupply rates
  
• Low market supply does not use sad face icons, to avoid implying a penalty
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Markets can be oversupplied even from the start of the game (by 100%)
  
• Lowerered Stone Mason research time
  
• Lowered baseline demand for Wood, Stone, Stone Brick, and Plank
  
• Further decreased effect of Land on resource regeneration rates (was too high and making Cultivation and Prospecting useless in early game)
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Goods Consumption Boost upgrades were being applied to the baseline demand for an item, instead of just affecting oversupply
  
• Player could specify a production limit for Market recipes that exceeded the max demand for that item
  
• Cultivation production auto-assign could enter a cycle where it would be added and removed repeatedly
  
• Water Spring was showing up twice in tooltip for Well
  
• Hotfix 1.0.0a: Fixed low land amounts having negative impact on resource regeneration rates
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Advanced levels of Research Speed upgrade, that require red, blue, and purple coins, now require that coin’s respective unlock quest to be completed first
  
• Stone Mason is now available in initial research set, and Quarry research is dependent on Stone Mason, instead of vice versa. This is because Stone Bricks are needed very quickly but the Quarry is not
  
• Reduced the multiplier that Land has on resource regeneration from .5x per land to .1x per land. Increased baseline resource regen rate for all resources (resource regen was scaling too fast)
  
• Increased baseline harvest speed of Harvester Hut Wood from .25/sec to .4 / sec (Was difficult for early towns to keep up with increased market demand for wood)
  

[h2]Misc Improvements[/h2]

• Changed many icons & background images
  
• If tutorial was instructing player to build a General Store, but no Workers were available, the tutorial pointer finger will point to the House instead of the General Store
  
• Tutorial pointer finger will point to the Town Perks and/or the Global Perks buttons if the player has available perks to purchase and has not yet opened the panels
  
• More detailed tooltips will be shown when hovering over production contribution details
  
• Labels in production tooltip details will more specifically show the producing or consuming building, not just the panel (e.g. “Forester” instead of “Cultivation”)
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Auto-assign production capacity on Cultivation and Prospecting recipes would ignore natural resource regen, resulting in excess amounts of production capacity assigned
  
• Desert Well penalty was not being applied
  
• Descriptions were missing for Steam Pipe, Power Line, Mana Pipe, Magma Pipe, and Omni Pipe speed upgrades
  

First, a quick but important announcement:

[h3]Factory Town Idle is transitioning from Early Access to a "1.0" Full Release version![/h3]

The launch will happen this Monday, January 8th. I've been working on the game for a year and a half, 9 months of that in Early Access, and I feel it's finally ready for this upgraded status. I will still be making additions and improvements after launch, so it's mostly a cosmetic change, but it's still a meaningful way to tell potential new players that the game is in good shape.

If you've been enjoying the game and all of its updates, I'd definitely appreciate a new or updated review on Steam! I try not to ask for this too often, but it's super helpful going into Launch Day to have some recent reviews up there on the store page.

Special thanks to all the players that have given me feedback here or on the Discord, it's been absolutely essential during the game's development for me to hear thoughts from real players so I can add or fix stuff based on what people want.

Ok with that out of the way, here's the latest patch notes:

[h2]New Trading Capabilities[/h2]
Previously, some items weren't tradeable at all and this made it difficult to fully support some newly created towns. But I also didn't want to increase the pressure on the Trading Post since it's already used for so many things. Similarly, there were some 'support' buildings that added flat bonuses but otherwise weren't very interesting and could be repurposed. So, I've turned these into a variety of new ways to trade special items.

• Mana Pipeline: Trades Mana Crystals and Mana Power between towns. Built with Mana Pipes.
  
• Steam Pipeline: Trades Steam between towns. Built with Steam Pipes.
  
• Omni Pipeline: Trades Omnistones between towns. Built with Omni Pipes (this is a new item, produced at the Machine Shop from Omnistones and Mana Pipes and is sellable at the Hardware store for Purple coins.)
  
• Magma Pipeline: Trades Fire between towns. Built with Magma Pipes (another new item, produced at the machine shop from Steel and Power and sellable at the Hardware Store for Red Coins)
  

In cases where players already had active trades using these items at the trading post, they are granted extra pipelines to support these trades. The pipeline buildings are always unlocked globally once a certain number of the related Pipe items have been produced.


[h2]UI Improvements[/h2]

• Added Skill display back to recipe rows (sorry about removing it!)
  
• To make space for the Skill display, the Pause and Production Limit functions have been combined. They are accessible by clicking on the recipe's production progress bar, instead of having their own icons.
  
• Moved Research / Upgrades / Construction to top navigation panel instead of being underneath town stats. This opens up more room for inventory and quests, and makes the UI similar to the older style which it seems many players preferred.
  
• Inventory Panel will expand its height when fewer coin rows are visible that would otherwise occupy that vertical space
  
• Quests panel has larger default height (shows 4 quests instead of 3)
  
• Moved Quest Coins to the top-right grouping with the rest of the global management buttons (rewards, time tokens, etc)
  
• Building construction progress bars animate more smoothly
  
• Search input field is now hidden by default, can be toggle on by hitting new ‘Search’ button on the main panel header (or using hotkey Ctrl-F)
  
• Removed background images from some parts of the UI so it doesn’t feel like all the background space is occupied
  
• Combined “Housing” and “Support” buildings into “Buildings” navigation category, to save space on the town navigation header
  
• To avoid confusion, the previous “Buildings” panel (which displayed building counts and construction status) is now called “Construction” and its hotkey is C
  
• Increased size of confirm button on reward panel
  
• Small text size animation applied when manually changing assigned production capacity
  
• Rail Depot is now in the “Storage” Category
  
• Town Happiness is now shown as a full progress bar with percent
  
• Available worker count is shown on the House header in main recipe list
  
• Can right-click on building headers to expand/collapse all similar headers (just like Control+left click currently does)
  
• Tooltip guide can alternate which side of the screen it can appear on, based on how far left or right the guide would normally appear on the screen
  
• Clicking a locked item icon will now pin the tooltip guide
  
• Tooltip guide for recipes will show the recipe requirement
  
• Added better indicator of locked state on each Perk
  
• Improved formatting on long time spans
  
• Improved tooltip on rate progress for research and construction
  

[h2]Misc Improvements[/h2]

• Clicking a required research within the tooltip panel will navigate to that research, as well as update the tooltip panel to show that research’s information
  
• Improved description of Crafting speed perk so it is more clear that it applies only to recipes in the ‘Crafting’ category
  
• Changed icons for some town perks to better match the associated panel
  
• Changed sprite for General Knowledge Tome
  
• Changed sprite for Mana Crystal natural resource
  
• If tutorial pointer finger is highlighting a building ‘add’ button, and that building is hidden by an active production filter, the pointer finger will instead highlight the production filter button
  
• If tutorial finger is highlighting a button on a recipe production row, and that row is hidden due to its building header being minimized, the pointer finger will instead highlight the building header expand/collapse button
  
• When an building cost item is locked, it will show a more detailed tooltip when hovered to give player a way to find out how to obtain it
  
• Upgrade ‘Workers per House’ is now accessible from the House building’s upgrade panel
  
• Upgrade ‘Research Speed’ is now accessible from the School building’s upgrade panel
  
• When mass-expanding header sections, the list will scroll to the last header you clicked on to prevent it from going off-screen due to section expansion
  
• Navigation button for Trading filter appears as soon as Trading Post is available to build, otherwise it can be hard to know how to build a trading post
  
• When the upgrades panel is closed, any text search filter will be removed
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Biomes must be unlocked in order Plains > River > Forest > Mountains > Jungle > Desert > Snow > Magic. However, if a player already has a town started in one of these biomes it will remain unlocked.
  
• Demand for different goods will have more variance in how they scale with Town Level. Basic Goods will scale much slower then advanced goods. However, scale effect based on number of houses has increased. In general this means there is more demand for all items.
  
• To limit the effect of this increased demand on high-end towns, the power of the Goods Consumption perk has decreased by 50%.
  
• Doubled baseline sell speed on basic items, so that early towns can keep up with this increased demand without needing to build too many Markets
  
• Town Trading Speed and Global Trading Speed perks now apply to all trading recipes, not just Trading Post recipes
  
• Added more levels to the Construction Speed town perk
  
• Increased duration & cost for more end-game recipes and research
  
• Research for Fire/Earth/Water/Air temples now require Mana Temple to be researched first
  
• For simplicity and consistency, town perks “Cultivation Productivity” and “Prospecting Productivity” are now “Cultivation Speed” and “Prospecting Speed”. Instead of increasing the number of items produced, they increase the recipe speed. 5 more levels have been added to each.
  
• Previous production tab called “Research” is now called Knowledge, to help differentiate it from the Research tab
  
• Slightly increased xp requirements for skill level gain, so they don't rise excessively fast in the early game
  
• OmniTemple has been moved to the Knowledge tab, since it produces items consumed by research recipes
  
• Added 5 more levels to Global Market Speed perk
  
• Added new Town Perk “Knowledge Speed”. Increases speed of all Knowledge-related recipes, that is, recipes produced by Study, Tech Lab, Mage Tower, and Omnitemple. Note that these recipes no longer benefit from “Crafting Speed” perk as they are not classified as Crafting recipes.
  
• Increased skill gained from manual recipe clicks by 8x
  
• Upgrades panel unlocked after 5 research, instead of 10
  
• Can earn Red Coins from level up rewards
  
• Prospecting Speed perk unlocks with Quarry, not Mine
  
• Knowledge Speed perk requires a Study to be built before it can be used
  
• Increased max workers on Forge research to 10
  
• Increased General Knowledge Tome costs in many research recipes
  
• Research Speed upgrade is now unlocked based on global research completed, so it is more easily available in new towns that need help speeding through early research
  
• Removed ‘Power Line’ research. Now, Power lines are unlocked globally with a quest to produce a set amount of Copper Wire. This quest is automatically marked as complete if the player has built any Power Lines in any of their towns.
  
• Added new speed upgrades for Power Line, Steam Pipeline, Mana Pipeline, Magma Pipeline, and Omni Pipeline
  
• Increased resource regeneration rate of Rock, as it was too easily becoming a negative value in early towns
  
• Added early-game quest to ‘Build 10 Houses’ as a bridge between the 1 House and 15 House quests
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed overflow error when calculating very long time durations
  
• 'Add Production Capacity' button was not greyed out when research was already at max capacity
  
• When attempting to assign more production capacity to a research than was allowed, the research header was flashing as if there wasn’t enough schools. Instead the current/max label will flash
  
• Recipes that produce Knowledge Orbs (i.e. Omnitemple recipes) were not producing any XP
  
• ESC key was not always removing the top-most dismissable window
  
• “???” was appearing in tooltip for Power production, due to Solar Power recipe being available but non-productive in biomes other than Desert
  
• Tutorial pointer finger would appear above pop-up menu panels
  
• Skill tooltip was not updating every simulation tick
  
• All numbers in the thousands were being displayed as rounded to the nearest 10
  
• Automatic Assignment is unlocked at town level 10, but it was shown in the level 11 rewards
  
• Perk labels would not reload when language option changed
  
• Quest to make Wool Cloth to unlock Hat was visible before Wool Cloth was unlocked
  
• Unlocked Markets with zero items to sell did not have correct display on their headers
  
• Cost displayed on Construction Details panel would not immediately update after Construction Cost perk modified
  
• Clicking quickly to fast-forward the town level up reward animations would sometimes result in particle effects that were too large