Factory Town Idle News

[h2]New Features[/h2]

• New Game Modifier: Trading Tokens. In this mode, exporting an item earns 'Trading Tokens' based on the value of the item. Imports require spending these tokens. This system encourages towns to have a balanced import/export scheme. In this mode, there is no maximum storage limit within Trading Posts so that towns can always earn Trading Tokens. This modifier unlocks once the player has reached Town Level 25 at some point in any playthrough.
  
• New Game Modifier: Default Auto-Assign. In this mode, the Auto-Assign feature is always available and is on by default for all buildings (except trading buildings). This modifier unlocks once the player has reached Town Level 25 at some point in any playthrough.
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Added ‘Continue’ button to main menu. (It appears after the player has loaded a save file in this version once, as that info must be stored first before the game knows which file to continue playing)
  
• Game modifiers Easy Mode, Hard Mode, Mild Biomes and Extreme Biomes are now available by default instead of requiring game progress.
  
• In Extreme Biomes mode, Magic Jewelry research is now exclusive to the Magic biome (not the Jungle Biome) because those items are made at the Enchanter (which is only in the Magic Biome).
  
• Magic Potion recipe no longer requires Mana Transmitter research, because in Extreme Biomes mode, Magic Potions can only be made in the Forest biome's Medicine Hut but Mana Transmitter research is only available in the Magic biome.
  
• Magic Medicine research now has Mana Power as an input, to guarantee the player has access to Mana Power which is required for making Magic Medicine items.
  
• Quest that unlocks Steam Pipeline now also requires the player to produce a certain amount of Steam as well, otherwise the Steam Pipeline may be unlocked before Steam can be produced.
  
• Trading recipes for Steam, Fire, Power, and Omnistones default to trade mode “Auto-Balance” instead of “Off”
  
• World Panel icons are not hidden for unlocked biomes when game modifier Extreme Biomes or Mild Biomes is active
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Tooltip for ‘Excluded’ buildings on World Panel was not localized
  
• Turbo mode timer would occasionally flicker the counter up and down based on odd timing of accruing and spending time tokens
  
• Game could not load files with a period character in the file name
  
• Research and Upgrade buttons were available in the World panel before they were normally unlocked
  

[h2]Game Modifiers[/h2]
When creating a new game, you can now select multiple 'Game Modifiers' that can change the game progression in dramatic ways. Many of them require some game progress to unlock.

• Extra Idle / Extra Active: Changes construction & research speed to support more 'Active' or 'Idle' playstyles. Extra Active mode speeds up construction and research, removes the ability to earn Time Tokens, and increases Click Power. Extra Idle mode increases construction and research times, but increases amount of idle time that can be accrued.
  
• Easy Mode / Hard Mode: These change the rate of coin & XP gain, the strength of many perks, available Land, and natural resource regeneration.
  
• Mild Biomes / Extreme Biomes: This setting will decrease or amplify differences between Biomes. Mild Biomes removes a lot of the penalties from different biomes, and Extreme Biomes adds a lot of additional differences and makes many buildings exclusive to one particular biome or another.
  
• Permanent Perks: This modifier prevents you from lowering the assigned level of a Perk within a playthrough. So you must be extra thoughtful when assigning Perk Points!
  
• Low Population: This modifier decreases the amount of Workers you get per House. This adds extra management challenge as you decide which are the most important buildings to staff.
  
• Infinite Storage: In this modifier, all resources and items have no maximum capacity. All Storage buildings and upgrades are removed. Recipes will not naturally self-limit, since they can not reach saturation.
  
• Infinite Land: Buildings no longer take up land, so you can expand faster.
  
• Infinite Consumption: There is no limit to how much you can oversupply a Market. This allows you speed up progression quite a bit if you can keep your production running.
  

Feel free to mix & match these as you want! Let me know if you have ideas for additional modifiers.

[h2]Simplified Research Tech Tree[/h2]
As the game was developed, new tech was added and removed quite a bit. As a result the tech tree that linked all the research together was a bit of a mess. Besides cleaning it up to make it easier to follow, I also needed to make sure that new restrictions on buildings in the 'Extreme Biomes' modifier didn't cause any necessary tech to get blocked.

The full details of all the changes are too numerous to mention, but the most important points are:

• Most research that simply unlocked new recipes were converted to Quests (e.g. Reinforced Plank, Copper Wire, Paper, Quartz). Players that previously produced these items will have these new Quests automatically marked as 'complete'.
  
• Basic Logic, Intermediate Logic, and Advanced Logic were removed. Related dependencies were merged into Study, Tech Lab, and various Tome researches.
  
• Magic Construction has been merged into the Enchanting research.
  
• Many cases where a research was required as a prerequisite instead simply requires access to the research's input items.
  

[h2]Unlimited save files[/h2]

• Instead of 5 slots to pick from, you can now have an unlimited number of save files.
  
• When creating a new game you pick whatever file name you want.
  
• When loading, you will see a list of all the files you've created. Files created in versions prior to this update will be called "slot1", "slot2", etc.
  
• When in a game, you also have the option to "Save As" under a different file name.
  
• You can right-click on a row in the file browser to view an option to delete the selected file.
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Infinite Research “Omnitemple Speed Boost” is now “Knowledge Speed Boost” and it boosts all Knowledge recipes by 25% per level (including Omnitemple recipes)
  
• Capped all research and construction costs at 10^300, to avoid overflowing the data types used to store costs
  
• Polished Stone is now made from Quartz instead of Refined Stone Brick
  
• Quest that unlocks Polished Stone now requires Quartz production instead of Refined Stone Brick production
  
• Quest for Berry Cake no longer unlocks until the player has access to Berries
  
• Quartz recipe requires 8 Stone instead of 10 Stone
  

[h2]Misc Improvements[/h2]

• Added Brazilian Portuguese localization
  
• Changed icons for knowledge tomes so the tiers are easier to tell apart
  
• If a biome is locked, but its required quest is complete (but not claimed), clicking the “Create” button on the World panel will automatically mark the quest as complete
  
• Unmet requirements with item / research tooltips will display highlighted in red
  
• All tooltips on research ingredients will show the full tooltip guide for the item
  
• Tooltip guide for Coins shows which stores produce the coin type
  
• Menu that appears when right-clicking an item icon will show an Info button at the top that will open the tooltip guide for the item
  
• Game menu dismisses automatically after ‘Save’ clicked
  
• Tutorial pointer finger will no longer appear if the player has reached level 10 in any of their previous save files
  
• More details about recipe speed / productivity modifiers are shown in the tooltip for recipe progress
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• "NaN" would appear in very large construction costs
  
• Tooltip panel would occasionally show items in the wrong order
  
• Skill gain was being undercounted during Fast-forward (turbo) mode
  
• Recipe speed modifiers were not being counted when calculating skill gain
  
• Skills will now gain as many levels as they need to during a single simulation tick, rather than being limited to one level up per simulatio tick
  
• Removed redundant building requirements from harvesting / farming recipes
  
• Fixed tooltips for Harvesting buildings showing excess line listings for each item harvested
  
• No reward was displayed when completing research “Ether Bonus: Earth Power” or any research that boosted cultivation / prospecting
  
• Item icons in tooltip guide would not always show the items’s name in a text tooltip when hovered
  
• IndexOutOfArrayBounds error was possible when returning to the main menu after launching with music turned off
  
• (Hotfix 1.3.0h) Fixed German localization missing many terms
  
• (Hotfix 1.3.0i) Fixed new natural resources appearing with "NaN" quantity when unlocking during gameplay
  

• Fixed bug: Production detail tooltip for currencies would incorrectly sort 'Production' rows at the bottom of the list, below Consumption totals
  
• Fixed bug: Research panel would not consistently update its display of available production capacity
  
• Fixed bug: Item Consumption detail tooltip would sometimes show “-100%” in the Contribution column when “100%” should be used
  
• Research panel production capacity now appears like the other production capacity displays in the game, and allows right-click 'Remove All' behavior
  

[h2]Turbo Mode performance improvement[/h2]

• Turbo (fast-forward) mode has been optimized to run smoothly at all speed multiples. It does this by running one full simulation step per frame, and then repeating the last recorded net gain/loss for each item multiple times, until it catches up with the targeted simulation time.
  
• If a building or research is completed during these 'repeat' simulation steps, another full simulation step is triggered to calculate updated delta values (so you don't spend more than you need to on a building or research).
  
• This process can occur multiple times in a single frame, which may be necessary if lots of buildings are completing in rapid succession. However if the game is unable to run enough full simulations within the limit for a single frame (1/60 of a second), it will save those simulation steps for the next frame, and so on. This can result in a difference between the target turbo rate and the actual number of simulation steps run, but it will not spend more time tokens on these steps than are actually used not will it cause the frame rate to suffer.
  

[h2]Production Tooltip Improvements [/h2]

• Production and Consumption are now grouped more clearly, and a ‘Total’ value is shown beneath each section.
  
• The “Potential” and “% Potential” are now based on how much can be produced within the constraints of actual storage space. That is, if a recipe is running slowly due to storage being full for its output item, this will show as running at “100% potential”, instead of appearing as running at < 100%. A recipe will only show as running at < 100% potential if there are not enough inputs to run the recipe at full speed.
  
• Can expand and collapse Production and Consumption groups in production tooltip panel
  
• Can click on headers to sort production/consumption tooltip by Name, Contribution %, Potential, Actual, and % Potential contribution values
  

[h2]Misc Improvements[/h2]

• Save games now remember which building category tab was last visible, so it can be loaded when restarted
  
• The expand / collapse state of headers on the Trading panel are shared between towns, making it easier to track specific items' status when switching towns using hotkeys (Ctrl+Left Arrow or Ctrl+Right Arrow)
  
• Manual recipe production via click will potentially add to max demand per second for the purposes of increasing storage
  
• Added more contrast on the background for each building’s available production capacity, to help differentiate it from the recipe’s production capacity
  

[h2]Booster Building Changes[/h2]

Changes were made to the Booster buildings (Factory, Airship, Magic Boat) to include items that were not boosted by anything, and remove double boosts of some items. The new logic is:

• 'Factory' boosts Workshop, Tailor, Pasture, Machine Shop, Stone Mason, Lumber Mill, and Food mill.
  
• 'Magic Boat' boosts Medicine Hut, Bakery, and Gourmet Kitchen
  
• 'Airship' boosts Jeweler, Refinery, and Enchanter.
  
• 'Foundry' (new building) boosts production speed of Forge and Magic Forge buildings.
  

The effects of these changes are as follows:

• Bread, Apple Juice, Pear Juice, and Berry Juice were boosted by both Factory and Magic Boat, now they are only boosted by the Magic Boat.
  
• Tailor items were being boosted by both Factory and Airship, now they are only boosted by the Factory.
  
• Pasture recipes were not boosted by anything, they are now boosted by the Factory.
  
• Refinery and the Enchanter were not boosted by anything, they are now boosted by the Airship.
  
• Glass was boosted by the Workshop, now it’s boosted by the Foundry.
  
• All other Forge and Magic Forge items were not boosted by anything, now they are boosted by the Foundry.
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Changed cost growth curve for all Buildings. In general they cost more at lower counts, and much less at higher (100+) counts
  
• Effect of upgrades for Steam Pipeline, Omni Pipeline, Power Line, Magma Pipeline, and Omni Pipeline are now exponential (they double their effect each level) instead of increasing the base effect by 50% each level. There are also 10 levels of each instead of 5. Each level requires more of the underlying building type to unlock the next upgrade type.
  
• Infinite research “Goods Consumption Boost” (which increases max market supply rates) increased from 20% per level to 50% per level
  
• Building construction times do not scale so high when you have hundreds / thousands of buildings
  
• Increased thresholds at which Quarry construction requires advanced items like Steel and Refined Planks
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Background tint of menu row items would occasionally have inconsistent colors
  
• Production speed tooltip was showing ‘Baseline Speed’, but not any indicator if the recipe produces more than 1 unit of output per recipe. This was causing the displayed potential items/sec value to not match the displayed values when added up. A new line for ‘Productivity’ has been added that displays number if items per recipe loop that are produced.
  
• Building cost would be shown in red if player could not currently afford the entire cost, which is not applicable since the cost is paid gradually
  
• Inventory items would sometimes appear empty for a single frame when new construction started
  
• Displayed costs in the pop-up construction details panel would sometimes not reflect the current increment multiple
  
• Decreasing storage, and then increasing storage, was causing items to disappear and created possibility for goods production exploit
  
• High-level towns (> 60) would have increasingly long load times
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Reverted the ‘Dynamic Storage’ effect of Rail Depots. They were causing too much town instability due to sudden increase in storage. Rail Depots now provide a static boost of 10K to global storage capacity per building.
  
• The global perk “Global Trading Capacity” now has the dynamic storage effect that Rail Depots did in the previous version. Each level of this perk will now provide a bonus to all traded items’ global storage based on that items’ peak per-second demand. This also gives it consistent behavior with a similar Town Perk, and can be adjusted up or down as needed.
  
• Since the Global Trading Capacity perk is now much stronger, the level of it was reduced to 1 for any players that had levels in it. Quest Coins are refunded for these levels. This allows players to more carefully increase their trading post storage without causing major production shortages.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed label on Quest Coins button saying 'Perks' instead of the number of available quest coins
  

This should resolve any issues with overproduction causing resource shortages in previous patches. Another good solution to this is to set trading post recipe priorities to Low or Lowest, and you can also set Production Limits for trading recipes to 100%-200% of Demand so that towns will not export rapidly just to fill trading post storage.

If you are still struggling please let me know in the forums or on Discord and I will keep trying to find the right balance here!