Factory Town Idle News

Reminder that Early Access launch is tomorrow (Thursday April 20)! Huge thanks to everybody that helped with playtesting to get the game to this point, all the feedback was extremely valuable and helped smooth out a lot of balance issues & bugs that I probably would've missed.

Here's the latest patch notes:

• Idle Progress is now displayed on a new panel with a progress bar. No longer shows coin / xp gain (because the display gets busy with multiple active towns), but does show town level ups and research completed.
  
• Idle Progress no longer accelerates the simulation by quite as much, which makes the processing take slightly longer but results in more accurate calculations
  
• Fixed missing label and description for Shrine Speed and Temple Effectiveness upgrades
  
• Pickaxe Productivity renamed to Gem Mine Productivity, and has description now
  
• Fuel Efficiency upgrade has description now
  
• Fixed incorrect description formatting for Furnace Speed upgrade
  
• Fixed incorrect description formatting for production speed upgrades
  
• Permanent Research was able to be earned from Quest before the town had completed all component research
  
• Fixed incorrect label on Basic Logic Permanent Research
  
• Tooltip for permanent research now indicates “Unlocks” as a heading before listing the research affected
  
• Fixed Land showing “(Trading Post)” in its tooltip
  
• Removed upgrade Ether Bonus Warehouse Storage, will be replaced with infinite research
  
• Hid red square that was showing the text tooltip UI anchor
  
• Clicking on a resource icon before harvesting panel is unlocked instead navigates to the Clickables panel
  
• Fixed ‘Raise your town level by selling Market items’ tooltip showing on all quests
  
• Greatly increased rate at which Natural Resource Capacity increases with Town Level
  
• Fixed bug that would cause additional XP to be gained when loading a town
  
• Level requirements for biomes to discover precious gems raised from 6 to 10
  
• Updated localization
  

• Removed ability to reset World or Town. Ultimately this feature was not adding much fun for all the extra player effort it required. This may reduce replayability but will result in a much more balanced & interesting playthough. My goal is to eventually add an endgame condition that opens up a New Game + option with modifiers, which is probably a better way to extend gameplay than repeatedly resetting the same towns
  
• Prestige Points are now earned individually for each town as it gains XP. No town reset is needed to be able to use them. The prestige point panel unlocks when the main town reaches level 10.
  
• Any players who reset their towns earn back the XP lost in the reset, so their town levels are adjusted upwards to the point they should be if they never reset.
  
• Prestige points no longer provide a passive boost to XP gain, since that was one of the main incentives for the obsolete Town Reset function
  
• Trading no longer uses abstract supply / demand system. Instead a shared global inventory exists that all towns can deposit to (export) or withdraw from (import)
  
• Trading no longer requires workers, instead player must build Trading Posts. Each Trading post allows multiple active trading recipes, and adds to storage capacity of global inventory. Trading posts also have quests and upgrades to increase storage capacity and trading recipe slots provided per building.
  
• Note that legacy files may have trading panel temporarily locked until they complete the “Build 1 trading post” quest. They will also have an excess of workers since they are all freed up from trading, and probably will need to build multiple trading posts to account for all the previous trading recipes assigned.
  
• Exchange Tokens removed
  
• Instead of all towns performing their prioritization independently, the simulation processes all recipes at all towns in order of prioritization. This allows for more accurate allocation of global trading resources
  
• Unique resources are now truly unique - they can not be harvested or cultivated in other biomes
  
• More resources are unique to biomes: Ruby (Desert), Sapphire (Snow), Topaz (Mountains),m Amethyst (Jungle), and Mana Crystal (Magic).
  
• Some unique resources (Fish, Herb, Carrot, Potato, Cactus Fruit, Dragonfruit) are unlocked as soon as a town is created in that biome
  
• Refined Plank moved from the Workshop to the Lumber Mill (may result in negative recipes available at Lumber mill and an excess of Workshops, players will need to reshuffle their buildings, sorry!)
  
• Fixed per second displays displaying an overflowed integer value when rate was very high
  
• Fixed tooltip for Average Fulfillment header on Market panel
  
• Added more detail to tooltip for hovering Fulfillment meters for each Market item
  
• Tooltip for Town XP shows effect of Goods Fulfillment and Prestige Point multipliers
  
• Baseline storage increased for many buildings
  
• Baseline storage for Library items increased from 200 to 1000
  
• Added quests and upgrades to improve: Furnace storage capacity for Fire, Steam Boiler capacity for Steam, and Barrel capacity for liquids
  
• Quests that required X number of skills at level Y at a specific building now just required X times Y total skill levels. This is to avoid problems when not many skills were available at a building
  
• Removed quests and research for Building Construction Speed, as buildings are already much faster by default and that time no longer grows with each building
  
• Forest now has a 4x crafting speed bonus for Medicine Hut
  
• Jungle now has a 4x crafting speed bonus for Jewelry (instead of Medicine Hut)
  
• Increased crafting time for all Medicine Hut recipes
  
• Decreased demand for all Medicine Hut recipes
  
• Quest to unlock Stockpile only requires stone, not stone & wood since lots of wood has already been harvested
  
• Decreased rate at which Houses require more advanced resources in early game
  
• Increased school coin cost
  
• Lowered sound effect volume of harvest water splash
  
• Gem Jewelry (Ruby & Sapphire Ring, Amethyst Necklace & Topaz Crown) now has individual research, instead of a Harvesting Skills quest for relevant gems which wouldn’t be possible in biomes where the gems don’t occur. If players previously produced any gem jewelry before new research requirement added, the research is now automatically completed
  
• World panel unlock pushed back to town level 12, other permanent research quests also pushed back 2 levels
  
• New permanent research unlock: Basic Logistics, when a town reaches level 18. Permanently unlocks Basic Logic, Prioritization, and Automatic Assignment
  
• Plains has an additional production speed bonus to Bakery and Gourmet Kitchen recipes
  
• Bakery and Gourmet recipes slowed down slightly
  
• River has additional bonus to Pasture crafting speed
  
• Forest has additional bonus to Lumber Mill
  
• Removed some admin commands, unless is in playtest mode
  
• World creation time is added to save file (retroactive only as far back as launch of this version)
  
• Daily rewards (for full game only) now provide 2 or 3 quest coins on a random basis
  
• Display order improved for Quests
  
• Secondary towns start out with 3 Houses, a Lumber Mill, a General Store, and a Food Market
  
• Resources unique to displayed town’s biome are shown at top of trading panel
  
• Raised level requirements for River Town level to unlock Mountains from 10 to 15
  
• Raised level requirements for Forest Town level to unlock Jungle from 10 to 15
  
• Raised level requirements for Mountain Town level to unlock Snow from 15 to 20
  
• Raised level requirements for Jungle Town level to unlock Desert from 15 to 20
  
• Got rid of obsolete Fishing research, since Fish can be harvested in the River without any new tech
  
• Fishery research now requires Fish Food and Yellow Coin, instead of Fish, General Knowledge Tome, and Red Coin. It is also exclusive to the River biome since the Fish resource is exclusive to that biome
  
• When an item is unlocked in any Biome it is immediately unlocked in all other biomes. This means it would potentially show up in inventory, trading, and market panels if other display requirements met.
  
• Nails, Iron Ingot, Copper Ingot and Steel storage moved from the Warehouse to the Stockpile
  
• Added milestone quests to reach level 10 in Mountain, Desert, Snow, and Jungle
  
• All ores have a small regen factor. This also allows them to gain benefit from the Resource Regen perk
  
• Fixed Study / Tech Lab / Mage Tower proficiency upgrades appearing before the building was unlocked
  
• Fixed bug: Average Market Fulfillment was displayed lower than it should be, because market items were included in this average calculation as soon as their producing building was available, even if the associated market building was still locked / hidden, and thus were not yet sellable
  
• Fixed bug: active inventory filters weren’t cleared when creating new towns, possibly resulting in a blank inventory panel when new town loaded
  

• Reworked Market Happiness system. Previously, a Town XP Multiplier bonus was awarded based on the average fulfillment of all items available in a market. However this had the effect of penalizing the player for unlocking new items, as it dropped their average fulfillment. Now, each item sold at a market has a fulfillment score between 0 and 5. All items’ scores are added to get a total fulfillment score for the town. This score is then converted into the town XP multiplier. To avoid confusion, only the market XP multiplier is shown on the Market panel, not any other XP multiplier (like the one you get from Prestige Points).
  
• 'Automatic Assignment' option has been added to all crafting, farming, mining, and research rows. When this is turned on, any new capacity for that building (either by creating new buildings, or upgrades) will be assigned automatically to that recipe. Only one recipe per building can be flagged as an Automatic Assignment. This ability is unlocked via the Automatic Assignment research (available after Basic Logistics is completed)
  
• Removed growth in construction time as you create more buildings, so construction is overall much much faster
  
• Added quests to reach high town levels in exchange for permanent completion of various research (persists across all towns & resets)
  
• Stockpile only requires Yellow Coins to build so it is not self-limiting
  
• Fixed bugs: Buildings that required zero land could not be built if land was negative, and Buildings that required zero workers could not be built if worker count was negative.
  
• Storage Upgrades now have exponential effect (value doubles each time) instead of multiplying by baseline value
  
• Animal Feed and Fish Food moved from Food Market to General Store. Fertilizer moved from Hardware store to General Store, and rewards Yellow Coins instead of Red Coins
  
• Reduced market demand for Cooked Fish, Bread, Plank, Refined Plank, Fish Oil, Ruby, Polished Stone Ring, Leather, Polished Stone, Wool Cloth, Cotton Cloth, and Enchanted Book
  
• Added proficiency upgrades, and related quests, for Study, Tech Lab, and Mage Tower
  
• Food Market allows 1 additional worker per building
  
• Market demand starts out higher (to increase coin earnings potential in early game) but town level has much less effect on demand, so that happiness doesn’t jump up so quickly. House Count has more effect on demand, but overall effect is that market demand is lower than before
  
• Lumber Mill doesn’t require Planks after 4 of them have been built to prevent negative feedback loop caused by low plank production
  
• Added filter buttons to the top of the Inventory panel that let you display only the items with increasing counts, or decreasing counts.
  
• Quest to unlock Desert biome requires Jungle Town Level 15, not 10
  
• Quest to unlock Snow biome requires Mountains Town Level 15, not 10
  
• Quest to unlock Magic biome split into two separate quests, one each for Desert and Snow biomes (and level requirement reduced to 20 from 25)
  
• Fixed Magic Biome unlock requirements not displaying the Snow biome requirement
  
• Fixed bug: Game files would fail to load in situations where a trading state was active on an item that was no longer unlocked in any towns (due to resets)
  
• Jams and Dragon Punch now categorized in Trading menu as ‘Gourmet’ instead of ‘Plank Products’ to be more consistent with Market categorization
  
• If research has infinite production time due to being starved for inputs, it will show “-” instead of the default display, which is the normal research duration
  
• If no workers are assigned to a recipe, then its progress bar will display as empty (recipes are created continuously, so the progress bar is only used as an indication of crafting speed). Recipes stalled due to missing input availability or output capacity will show the (unmoving) progress bar.
  
• Fixed coin ingredients showing the wrong text color as if they were unaffordable
  
• If Yellow Coin costs are displayed before Market panel is available, and the player clicks on the coin icon to learn more, the game will now highlight the necessary quests instead of jumping to a blank Market panel
  
• Idle Gain and Natural Resource Capacity global perks have initial cost lowered to 2. This also reduces cost of higher levels of these perks
  
• Prestige Points are earned faster (lowered the growth in xp thresholds for each subsequent Prestige Point)
  
• Fixed localization issues on Economics tooltip
  

Patch 1.61

• Many early quests and resources now have higher completion requirements, to improve pacing for new players
  
• Reformatted Trading list items to make Buy / Sell functions more obvious
  
• Towns level up automatically without having to click ‘Level Up’
  
• Fixed bug: changing towns would sometimes result in a Clickable item displaying the wrong inventory or skill count until it was clicked
  
• If player clicks on an ingredient that is locked by Research, but Research Panel is not yet available, the necessary Quest will be highlighted instead
  
• When Research panel is first unlocked, ‘Completed’ and ‘Locked’ sections are minimized by default
  
• Tooltip panel has more items that can be clicked on for navigation, like research requirements
  
• Fixed bug: Alert “!” was showing for World Perks panel before it was unlocked
  

Patch 1.60

• Updated sound effects
  
• Updated localization
  
• When Prestige XP count is displayed, the Town Reset buttons are now also displayed so players can view possible Town Perks
  
• Fixed bug: Quitting a town in progress, and starting up a brand new town file, would sometimes display blank center menus
  

Patch 1.59

• Town Notification bar shows ‘Welcome Back’ when loading a file, and displays idle progress earned if any. When first starting a game it will display Quest prompts
  
• Town Resets & Prestige Points stat items are hidden until the town is reset at least once
  
• Initial Click resource gain set to 1, and initial Gather Wood quest target raised from 4 to 10. Growth in click gain power slowed
  
• Fixed rounding issues with Click XP gain display
  
• Quest ‘Claim All’ button is hidden when there are 3 or fewer quests shown
  
• Updated localization
  
• Fixed bug: items that became unlocked due to Research would not directly trigger a refresh of the items available in the Inventory, Market, or Trading panels. This would also result in Market satisfaction displaying a lower fulfillment % than what it should seem to be based on displayed Market items (because newly available, but hidden, Market items would have no fulfillment)
  
• Fixed bug: quitting a game and starting a new one might result in a state where no menus tabs were openable
  
• Fixed bug: quitting a game and starting a new one was preserving the click power / XP from the previous file