Factory Town Idle News

- Fixed bug where settings on the Trading Post categories such as Pause, Auto-Assign, Priority, and Production Limit were not preserved when saving & reloading the game

[h2]Trading Autobalance[/h2]

Players have frequently asked for the ability to make trading recipes more flexible. Instead of always exporting or always importing, the recipe should switch between the two modes based on local production & demand. This feature is finally in place! When Autobalance is enabled, the trading recipe will dynamically switch modes based on whether the local town has a net positive or negative production rate of the item.

Now that there are more options for Trade mode, the mode selection is organized as a single button that pops up a menu allowing mode selection.

[h2]Trading Settings Inheritance[/h2]


Another common request was for the ability to specify trade settings at the trading category level, and have it inherited by the child recipes. This has been added, and prevents quite a bit of clicking when you want to set batch settings for trading recipes. Pause, Priority, Autobalance, Production Limit, and Trade Mode can all be inherited in this way. Any settings specified on the individual recipe level will override the parent group's settings.

On file load, the game performs a one-time migration of per-trading-recipe Import/Export settings into the trading categories. That is, if the game detects that all available trading recipes for a category are set to the identical Trade Mode setting, then the parent trading category is assigned that setting and all of its component trading recipes are set to “None/Inherit”. This means the trading recipes will continue to behave as they did before, but if the player wants to switch to AutoBalance mode they won’t have to individually change all of their trading recipes.

[h2]New option for Production Limit: Demand %[/h2]

Players can now specify a % of current demand as the production limit for recipes. Like other settings, this can be specified at the building / group or individually at the recipe.

[h2]Priority options expanded to 5[/h2]

Players now can specify priorities of "Very High" and "Very Low", bringing the total number of priority options to 5. Recipes will run in the order of highest priority to lowest priority, so if there is a shortage of resources this ensures the higher priority recipes will preferentially receive them.

The previous settings "High" and "Low" were assigned new icons. And the “Regular” priority was also given a new icon to differentiate it from "Default/Inherit".

[h2]Misc Improvements[/h2]

• Right-clicking on the Trading Mode icon will erase specified trading mode and set it to default/inherit.
  
• Added new infinite research: Cultivation Speed and Prospecting Speed
  
• Upgrade Efficiency and Construction Efficiency are now coin-based Upgrades (per-town) instead of a Global Perk that costs Quest Coins. Previously, players were incentivized to frequently switch assigned perks based on their current task, and this is tedious. For legacy files that had levels of these perks already purchased, those Quest Coins are refunded and all of their towns will have the new Upgrades assigned a level matching the previous level of the perk.
  
• AutoAssign previously would assign production capacity to a recipe with zero inputs, as long as a recipe making those inputs was set to a production limit of “Meet Demand”. Now, that input’s recipe must also have production capacity assigned or have auto-assign active for it to be counted as a potential source of a recipe's input (and thus allow production capacity to be automatically assigned).
  
• AutoAssign previously would remove production capacity from a recipe if it had no inputs. Now, it will preserve capacity as long as the item is potentially produced by a recipe set to “Meet Demand” production target and has production capacity assigned or is flagged as auto-assign.
  
• AutoAssign is slightly more aggressive at reducing production capacity when recipe is over-produced, previously it would keep more than necessary especially when capacity was in low single digits
  
• Alerts for new items are cleared when the parent panel is closed, removing need to click on them individually
  
• Removed quest coin rewards for a handful of non-global Upgrade quests, for consistency
  
• If player clicks on an icon for an item that is not produced in the local town, the game will navigate to the relevant row in the trading panel instead of doing nothing
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Removed the portion of the Well's tooltip that says “Automatically produces…”, as this is obsolete functionality
  
• Newly unlocked items wouldn’t immediately appear in the left-hand side inventory panel
  
• Clicking ‘Build’ while holding down a multiplier button (Shift, Ctrl) would not immediately update the displayed building cost to reflect the newly built/queued buildings
  
• Trading post headers for “Unique Resource (Export)” and “Unique Resource (Import)” would revert to less descriptive “Unique Resource” label after switching towns
  
• The term “Available” in the Land tooltip was not localized
  
• The quest “Cotton cloth skill for Shirt recipe” was visible from the beginning of the game, instead of waiting until when Clothing store first becomes available
  
• Reward panel showing unlocked items would sometimes appear after save+quitting to main menu
  

[h2]Glassmaking[/h2]

Players are now able to produce Quartz, and turn it into Glass. Glass can be sold at the Hardware Store, and eventually can be used to make Solar Panels - a unique building in the Desert Biome that produces lots of Power. More uses for Glass are planned for the future.

First, complete the new 'Quartz' research. This unlocks the ability to refine Quartz from basic Stone at the Stone Mason:



Then you can research Glassmaking, which unlocks the ability to make Glass Panes at the Forge:



Once you unlock the Desert Biome, you can much more easily harvest Quartz directly from Sand (which is a new unique resource at the Desert)



Glass becomes very useful in the Desert, because it has a new unique Solar Panel building. Solar Panels passively produce Power, which will be very helpful until higher tech sources of Power become available.



Power Lines are a new Building that unlocks the ability to trade Power between towns. This option is listed on the Trading panel.



Copper Wire is another new item that made from Copper Ingots at the Machine Shop. It's used in Solar Panels, Power Lines, and also replaces Copper Ingot ingredient of Batteries.



[h2]Water Rebalance[/h2]

• Well is now a Cultivation building, so it can be assigned production capacity instead of just passively generating water.
  
• Well Effectiveness Upgrades apply to the new Well cultivation recipe
  
• Wells are by default assigned max capacity based on number of wells
  

[h2]New Fishing Options[/h2]

• Added new item: Fishing Net. Used in a new harvest recipe in the Fishing boat that is more productive than regular fishing. Produced at the Workshop after researching Fishing Net. Only available in the River biome. Not tradeable or sellable.
  
• Added new item: Enchanted Fishing Net. Used in a new harvest recipe in the Fishing boat that is more productive than regular fishing or regular Fishing Nets. Produced at the Enchanter after researching Enchanted Fishing Nets. Only available in the River biome. Not tradeable or sellable.
  

[h2]Misc Balance Changes[/h2]

• Removed Tree Regeneration bonus for Plains Biome
  
• Removed requirement to build X houses for quests that unlock Market Consumption upgrades
  
• Each biome additionally has a Market Demand modifier for a certain market type. This aligns with and stacks with the unique Market Demand perk for each town.
  
• Natural Resources regen rate scales with Land, not Town Level (so regen rates will be much higher)
  

[h2]Misc Changes & Fixes[/h2]

• Improved scrolling performance
  
• Fixed natural resource “Gold Ore Deposit” showing with label “Gold Ore” which causes confusion between the natural resource and the harvested ore item
  
• Fixed incorrect color formatting for recipe rate tooltip when output is ‘Full’
  
• Unique Buildings are listed in Biome Tooltips
  
• Added new icon for Bakery and Quarry
  
• Changed color of Gem Mine icon
  
• World panel now shows icons for each biome modifier, with a tooltip when hovering
  
• When Solar Panel or Water Wheel is selected in Buildings panel, shows Power in the filtered Inventory Panel
  
• Trading Post is now in ‘Trading’ section of the Buildings panel (instead of Markets), so it fits alongside new Power Line trading building
  
• Trading Rows show ‘Off’ label and a red circle-with-slash icon when trading is turned off, to lessen confusion when no trading is occurring
  
• Renamed “Silver Ore Deposit” research to “Gem Mine” since that’s the more relevant item that is unlocked from it
  
• Fixed bug: Trading Details window would fail to show up when hovering over a Trading recipe row in some situations
  
• World button flashes more visibly when it's first unlocked
  

[h2]New Building: Arcane Emporium[/h2]

• The Arcane Emporium is a new Market-type building that sells magical crystals & ethers, which previously were not available for sale. It also sells OmniCoins, which were previously located at the Specialty Goods store. This was done because the Specialty Goods was overloaded with items, making it difficult to build enough to meet demand.
  
• Magical Clothing, which previously was sold at the Specialty Goods store, now sells at the Clothing Store.
  
• The Specialty Goods store, which then is left with just Jewelry to sell, has been renamed "Jewelry Store"
  
• Legacy saves are given additional Clothing Stores to balance out the effect of the extra selling capacity assigned by this change. If this causes negative land, bonus land is given as well to account for that.
  
• Legacy saves are given additional Arcane Emporiums if they were already selling Omnistones, so that sell rates are not interrupted. And bonus land is given in this case as well to make up for any deficits.
  
• Upgrades that had been applied to Specialty Goods store are transferred to Jewelry Store and Arcane Emporiums, if applicable.
  

Hotfix 1.80f: Fixed quests for Arcane Emporium Goods Consumption not being configured correctly

[h2]New Building: Mana Temple[/h2]

• This building matches the behavior of the other Elemental Temples, this one boosts productivity of the recipe that produces Mana Crystals
  
• This icon uses the Omni Temple's icon, and the Omni Temple was given a new icon
  

[h2]New Perk Features & Fixes[/h2]

• Added new Town Perk: Trading Speed, to greatly boost Trading Post throughput
  
• Added 8 new 'Market Demand' Town Perks. Each biome has one of these perks, that greatly increase the market demand for one category of item. This should allow for more biome uniqueness, as it affects the types of goods consumed and the types of coins that can be earned faster.
  
• Town Perks and Global Perks can now be adjusted up or down freely without penalty or cooldown.
  
• Removal of perk levels will be prevented if it would cause negative land, workers, or specialties
  
• Fixed bug: Town Perk and Global Perk costs were not displaying in red text when unaffordable
  
• Fixed bug: changes to Upgrade Efficiency perk would not immediately update displayed Upgrade costs
  
• Fixed bug: Town Perk ‘Construction Cost’ was not displaying its effect when the build-multiple options (Shift / Control) were activated, resulting in higher displayed costs
  
• Added progress bar to Town and Global quest perks
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Higher skill level targets were borderline impossible, and early skill levels too easy to achieve. So the skill XP level curve has been flattened - starts out steeper, but doesn’t get as incredibly steep in the later levels. Rough conversion from before-> after = 10->6, 20->11,30->25, 40->43, 60-> 89. Level 60 targets require 2.6M XP instead of 66M.
  
• Sawblade Truck Productivity quests have skill count targets lowered, since there is only 1 harvesting recipe available for it
  
• Harvester Drill Productivity quests have skill count targets increased, since there are multiple harvesting recipes for it
  
• Magic Conveyor Belt, Magic Rail Tile, Magic Boat Component, Airship Component, Mana Pipe, all magic potions now sell for Purple Coins
  
• Non-Magic Jewelry sells for Blue Coins instead of Purple Coins
  
• Magic Forge costs Blue Coins instead of Purple Coins (since all Purple Coins are now locked behind magic-type items)
  
• Removed 'Basic Medicine' requirement for Jewelry
  
• All markets now unlock globally with the completion of market-specific quests. This allows players to sell items even if they haven’t completed the prerequisite research to produce the item. These quests are automatically set as 'Complete' if the market type has already been built in any town.
  
• In order to increase biome specialization, all Biome Modifiers that used to boost Crafting Speed now increase Crafting Productivity (more outputs per input).
  
• Quests for Farm Production Capacity have their skill level targets lowered to more reasonable values
  

[h2]Misc Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed bug: pause and priority settings were not saved on recipes that had never been produced
  
• Fixed “N/A” text in some text when showing “(Biome)”, e.g. rewards screen
  
• Tooltip for Harvesting buildings shows icons in a compact grid instead of a huge list that must be scrolled
  
• Can click on a Building name to pin its tooltip
  

Hello! In this update, several changes were made to Harvesting for provide better balance & to support some future plans.

Instead of directly requiring Workers, Harvesting tasks now need Harvesting Huts to be created:



This allows Harvesting to work just like every other crafting recipe in the game: create the necessary building, then assign production capacity.



There are additional harvesting buildings as well: The Crop Harvester, Sawblade Truck, Fishing Boat, and Harvester Drill are now dedicated Harvesting buildings with their own harvesting recipes, skills, and upgrades. (Previously they were 'Support' buildings and provided passive boosts, but I wanted to give players better control over which resources these special vehicles were gathering.) These vehicles are often more powerful than the Harvester Hut, but do cost Power to run. (except the Fishing boat, obviously)

Each of these buildings & vehicles have their own set of upgrades, allowing them to produce huge amounts of goods.

The Fishing Boat is the only building that can gather Fish. It is exclusively available in the River biome, and no longer requires additional research.

Legacy maps were automatically given Harvester Huts based on how much harvesting capacity they had. But some manual adjustments may be necessary in your towns to assign harvesting recipes to these new buildings.

Since Workers are no longer required for harvesting, instead they are often required to construct a building (just like how Land works):



Land calculations were changed as well. New calculations work as follows: Default starting land (25) is added to the value from the 'More Starting Land' perk plus any bonuses from 'Exploration' upgrade. Then, multipliers are applied from Town Level, Land Capacity town perk, and the parent Biome. This has the effect of making Exploration and Starting Land scale along with town level. The value of Exploration upgrade was decreased downward since it doesn’t need additional scaling.

If you hover your cursor over the 'Land' icon within your town, you'll now get a detailed tooltip explaining how land is calculated:



That's a lot of adjustments, and it was difficult to ensure that towns at all levels were affected equally. It is likely that your towns will be better off than before, but if any players have large sudden deficits in their production, let me know and I'll see if some fixes can be made to automatically balance legacy saves.

A bunch of other quality-of-life features & balance changes were made:

• Added text search on Research and Upgrades panel
  
• Added ‘Claim All’ button on Research panel
  
• Added Omni speed upgrades for: Fire Shrine, Water Shrine, Earth Shrine, Air Shrine, Furnace, Water Pump, Steam Boiler, and Steam Power Generator
  
• Added omni upgrades for storage buildings
  
• Crop Harvesting Speed and Mineral Harvesting Speed have been merged into a single perk, "Harvesting Speed". This allows the perk to apply to all harvesting recipes which may not be crops or ores, like Fish & Water. For older save files, whichever of the previous two perks was higher is what was assigned to the new perk, and perk points of the unused one were refunded.
  
• Inventory panel shows smarter grouping by recipe “Input” or “Output”, and selecting a building on the Buildings panel will display and group “Input” needed to make the building, “Output” for items produced by the building, and “Storage” for items stored by the building
  
• Production Tooltip Inventory section can be expanded / collapsed to show storage details
  
• Lumber Mill and Stone Mason have much slower growth in non-coin construction costs, because otherwise they were self-limiting
  
• Added new Building: Floating Islands. Unique to Magic Biome. Adds 20 bonus land to the town for each building created (does not multiply with other land upgrades or perks).
  
• Resource max capacity is calculated based on land, not town level. (Thus any land gains directly translate into additional resource capacity). New values will generally be higher than before.
  

And some smaller bug fixes:

• Renamed ‘Prestige Points’ to ‘Town Perk Points’
  
• Added new icon for Exploration upgrade
  
• Fixed Simplified Chinese font using wrong glyphs for various characters
  
• Added more Japanese characters
  
• Tooltips for unique buildings indicate that they are unique to a specific biome
  
• Allowed bigger numbers before overflowing to display ‘infinity’
  
• Upgrades that affect individual harvesting / cultivation / prospecting recipes are shown in the parent buildings’ upgrades popup panel
  
• Fixed bug: Input supply ratio and Output capacity ratio would display as zero if the recipe was not actually limited by input or output
  
• Hotfix 1.79q: fixed upgrades displaying wrong costs when switching maps or biomes
  
• Hotfix 1.79r: fixed German localization that was temporarily broken
  
• Hotfix 1.79s: legacy save files that would load with negative land or negative workers based on the balance changes above are granted bonus land or workers to make up for the deficit
  

Again, let me know if any of these changes negatively affected your maps and I'll see if I can fix it from my end. Thanks!