Imagine Earth News

Welcome back colony managers,

here comes a set of awesome new features improving your space colonization systems. This month we spent a lot of time into pimping the user interface of the game into it's 4th evolution and making it 4k ready by the way.

With the remediation center a very important infrastructure building made it into this release and also the logistic center got a workover enabling you to fully automate repairing and cleaning processes. And there's more...

• New user interface
  
• Remediation center & carbon sequestration
  
• Logistic center is now maintenance station
  
• Desertification threat and temple power
  
• Solar park and wind farm alignement
  
• Mountain variations
  
• Fixes & improvements
  

The existing user interface clearly did not meet the demands of our colony & planet simulation. It was very clumsy and reminiscent of a casual mobile phone game.

So we rebuilt it, using the smaller and much clearer Roboto font for all text elements, while keeping our futuristic fonts for headers and elements that need highlighting.

The new interface now has become much easier to read while taking less screen space and thisway giving even more focus to the planet itself.

New:

Old:


If you are using a relatively small screen with a high resolution you can still zoom the interface up to 150% in the options.

A side effect of our work is that the new user interface has a higher resolution and thus is ready for your 4K display.


The new building remediation center comes with an additional worker drone and uses this drone to automatically start the clean up process for nearby fields.



An powerful upgrade for the center is carbon sequestration - the technical separation and storage of CO2 emissions from surrounding buildings and power plants. Thanks to underground compression, the exhaust gases do not enter the atmosphere.

The second ugrade for this building is "Advanced Remediation Process" it halves the cost of soil clean up in the area.


The logistic center is now called "Maintenance station" and automatically repairs nearby damaged buildings by default. It's upgrades are the fire station and "Advanced Repair Process", which halves the cost of repair processes in the area.



In the course of global warming there will be new deserts emerging next to others. Thereby the infertile wasteland is growing. The only way to prevent this is to plant forests onto desert fields so it can't spread. Trees will effectively stop the process of desertification.

In the illuminati temple you can use gaian energy to create a field of desert anywhere around the world. Except on fields with forests on them.


They are aligning to the sun and the wind direction now.




Each mountain has two versions now to bring more variety into the game's look.



These two versions are now put to the three edges of big mountains as well to make it easier to see whether a field is blocked by mountains.

• Fixed animation problems: we had some seriously strange problems with sub models and animations. Mystery finally concluded!
  
• Ships and oilplatforms no longer visible under water, while being built.
  
• City expansion now also needs drones.
  
• Show diplomatic relation progress as ring (full ring reaches next diplomatic level)
  
• Fixed orientation angle of volcanoes and huge mountains on small planets
  
• Sandbox category for mushroom forests
  

As always, have fun and give feedback!
Jens & Martin

Space colony people, may we have your attention please?

The age of diplomacy just kicked into Imagine Earth! Other corporations now have an attitude towards you. When you are being offensive they will find appropriate strategies to react to your doings. Also there's a mighty construct in this update for you as well: The Midras Extractor creates tornadoes and does terraforming.

Read your way down through all those good news to catch a glimpse of some future plans we have.

Thanks very much for being with us! If you do like the way we do things here please consider giving the game a thumps up on Steam. It would help as a lot!

Why not follow our brand new twitter account @SeriousBrothers?

• Diplomacy
  
• Midras Extractor
  
• Niter pumpkin seeds
  
• Planet Bonus Goals
  
• AI & Merchants
  
• Fixes & Improvements
  

Did you always want to interact more with the colonies you share the planet with? Well we did ever since. Now the other corporations have a mood set in seven levels from being allies to enemies. They react to certain events that you trigger like stealing their land by building a tower or using a hacking tool against them.



As you can see they stopped trading stuff with us because I threw an asteroid on them. There reactions go down to aggressively taking my terrain and buildings.

Note that these are our first "diplomatic steps" and will definitely need some refinement and your feedback!


The Extractor is a high tech construct of the Midras. It absorbs the power of fallen asteroids to generate force fields. It can do rare condensation to turns rocks into gold. Technically it condenses all the small metal particles so they become harvestable. A second power generates a force field in the sky to create a small-scale air vortex in the earth's atmosphere with an almost vertical axis of rotation - a tornado. Third it enables you to do terraforming.



For the next update we plan to build these and other temple structures with artifacts you can buy from the various races.


Natives will sell pumpkin seeds now. You can use them to plant your own nitro-pumpkins whereever you like.



In addition they trade ideon treasure maps showing how much ideon is in the nearest ideon deposit. Of course, you will also find classic products like gaian energy containers and the universes most favorite meal drug "Spice" in their shop.



The bonus competition missions in the campaign mode now have 5 goals which help to introduce the victory point systems. This will make it more of a challenge to reach full points in your game profile.

• The different AI fractions have individual item crafting preferences
  
• AI finally has trade demands for energy, food and goods
  
• AI actively buys resources for crafting tactical items
  
• AI pays more attention to its emission balance
  
• AI starts with less money because the where to rich!
  
• Merchants only offers rare resources and goods - no longer food and energy
  
• Merchants tries to offer things the player likely needs (e.g. for crafting)
  

• Nice new snowy mountains
  
• New construct: ski lodge for winter sports. Ahm no, just kiddin'! Time for spring to come...
  
• Titanium goal on Tuto had a problem that we fixed.
  
• Lithium goal on Lorian had an error regarding the amount of lithium that you were about to harvest.
  
• Laser rotation speed got faster now to shoot asteroids in time.
  
• Icon render order fixed.
  
• Fixed profile generation available colors.
  
• Fire spreads slower - we felt it was to dangerous.
  
• Building city center no longer costs extra money. The landing permission is enough.
  
• You can now destruct assimilator ruins. We wonder why nobody did complain, about this.
  

During the holidays Jens scribbled down some ideas about the next buildings that will fill the build rings in of our game. Tell us which one feel most intriging to you or what other possible game features you would like to see. The 3 most original ideas in the comments of our blog will win a steam key for yourself or a friend: https://www.imagineearth.info/alpha-40/

Thanks for reading about Imagine Earth!
Martin & Jens

Fellow space colony managers,

we recently discovered a new planet - say hello to Thera. In addition, our world management system needed some adjustments. All building upgrades were rebalanced and the resource simulation was revised. And of course there is so much more.....

• New bonus mission on planet thera - a planet like earth
  
• New vegetation graphics
  
• Upgrade balancing
  
• Resource simulation revised
  
• Assimilators & Xrathul Harvester interaction with bombs
  
• New trailer voiceover
  
• Other improvements
  

The latest planet that you can unlock in the bonus galaxy is Thera. It might remind you of another planet you left long ago, right where you grew up before you joined the colonization business and started building a better future in space. Make sure that history wont repeat itself on this planet...


We added some edge modells to forests so they look more organic and more round than triangle. As simply as this is said as astonishing it does look in the game.




All the upgrades in the game have been revisited and rebalanced. We mostly made them cheaper and more powerful to increase their strategic value.

Furthermore the visualization has been improved so you can see the most important numbers at a glimpse.




In order to make the upgrades more significant, we also had to adjust the complete resource simulation.

Let's have a look at the most important change: The production and consumption values of all buildings are now per space minute instead of per space second.
For example the tax value of a district now represents what is collected within a full space minute. 1/60 of the amount will be added to your budget ervery space second.
If your colony makes a profit of +300€, it will take one space minute until the full amount is added to your budget. This equals +5€ per space second.

This allowed us to increase the production and consumption values of all buildings which makes them easier to read and compare.
Money related values have been increased by factor 10. Energy, food, goods and rare resources have been increased by factor 2-4. The same goes for emissions and field pollution.



In addition it allowed us to halve prices and money budget and to reduce the size of a resource cargo from from 1.000 to 100 units. These values are now easier to read and compare with the production as well.



These flying enemies are now attackable with ideon bombs and explosive devices, which will be thrown on them by your drones.
To do so you can simply hover and click the flying enemy unit and pick the item of your choice. Thisway you also get a context info about their motives and vulnerabilities.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=55&v=FtihRNHqwQA

As you can hear the game features and mechanics are now explained by a native speaker with a compelling voice. As soon as we find time to redo the intro/trailer we also want to have this voice for Lima, the leading character in the game.

• The inventory is now accessible through the tool ring for fields where it makes sense to use items. In addition you can open the construct ring with a right click any time.
  
• Tower upgrades are also constructable through the tool ring when you have bought the corresponding item from a trader.
  
• No distorting ringing sound for infos anymore.
  
• Joe's 50k Sales Goal on Mission Joma is only triggered when Joe was not already fired by the boss... oups, that was a spoiler ;D
  
• On Planet Iqunox you have to craft medicine now instead of just selling medical substence harvested from corals.
  
• Rounos Native Quest now tells you to build towers to repress uprisings of angry natives.
  
• Mission Joma: We added a "Buy Scanner" goal to make more clear how to proceed in the mission.
  

• The fieldmarker was redesigned to look better!
  
• Tons of forest models have been optimized and graphics reworked.
  
• Underwater build animation got fixed.
  
• Hospital icon fixed, pumpkin shadow fixed.
  
• Rooftop of the saw mill construct fixed.
  
• Palms bigger and bump map fixed.
  
• Reconstruct icon fixed.
  

Dear Space Colonists, our monthly update of Imagine Earth this time adds a background story frame to the campaign and a new additional vegetation set.

• Mushroom Vegetation
  
• Epic background story
  
• Resource Storage
  
• No More Fake AI on Rounos
  
• New Flashy Quest Icons
  
• Other improvements
  

Maybe you where one of those who perceived our planets as a bit too normal and not very alien-like. We had the same feeling for some time and saw chance to try something new in terms of vegetation. The whole set of forests (8 bioms + 1 underwater) is now being replaced on two of the six campaign planets to make their themes more diversified. It also triggered us to do another set of vegetation besides trees and mushrooms. Could be giant ferns or totally alienated, glowing crystal plants. Any ideas?




We heard it from time to time and felt the same way. The campaign was lacking a bigger context for the story. We have added this now in the form of cut scenes told in the campaign screen. This links all the missions to a big picture and a real goal that is followed by you and the other companies.




A minimum of 10% goods will always be put into storage if you prioritize a certain resource. That keeps you from waiting for a resource package you wanted to store when the production value of the resource is low.




On the Rounos mission we had a scripted enemy which could finally be replaced by our AI. In addition we have polished the mission on planet Rounos. There were serious balancing issues that are hopefully working out much better now.

Important note: All old savegames on Rounos wont work anymore. Sorry, but this was necessary.




You can recognize much easier when there are important events somewhere on the planet. Quest icons have pulsing markers around themselves. In addition these quests are arranged in an own line in the bookmark panel. You can jump to these Events simply by pressing TAB.

• New resource warning icons
  
• Achieved goals will be shown and highlighted in cut scenes
  
• AI cares about food & goods diversity
  
• Traders will trade craftable Icons only occasionally
  
• Fires won't spread so fast anymore
  

• Forest had plus on themselves
  
• pollution effects were to high
  
• Improved pest and epidemic particle effects
  
• AI relied too much on oil platforms
  
• No AI enemies where spawning in competition mode
  
• Natives mood and goods usage
  
• Native camp model had reflected surfaces
  
• Fishery reduced its own productivity
  
• Game crashes with access denied folders
  

Dear Space Colonists, our monthly update of Imagine Earth this time focuses on improving the visualization of building productivity and quality of life for cities.

• Joma Extended & "Healing" for Temples
  
• Fusion Reactor
  
• Fire Station
  
• Money and Tax Balancing
  
• New UI for Details on Productivity and Quality of Life
  
• Other improvements
  

It's now possible to donate items and resources to other colonies. For now this has only relevance for the missions, but in the near future we will be working on a diplomacy system.

We have extended the Joma mission to make use of this feature with respect to the epidemics and Birons. This gives you the chance to take a decision at one point that will have influence to a later part of the mission.



The cure spell that is now available in temples neutralizes pathogens that can pose a threat to more complex forms of life on site - in other words, you can use it to heal epidemics.


This new building is introduced in the Rounos mission.



The fusion reactor generates thermonuclear energy of nuclear fusion. Lithium is needed as a raw material, which can be extracted from asteroids on most planets. There is only relatively little radioactive waste and the reaction can be aborted safely at any time.

The "divertors" upgrade improves binding of impurities from the plasma and reduce maintenance and disposal costs. The "reactor extension" upgrade expands the reactor so that additional energy can be produced.

This building most likely will need some additional balancing, since it's the first time a building consumed rare resources.



The fire station is an upgrade for city districts and the logistics center. It ensures that fires in the vicinity are automatically extinguished by a drone. In addition, the probability of forest and building fires is halved.


Currently you always have loads of money in the long term. We are trying to improve the balancing of this a bit. In the first step we have increased the start budget and decreased tax income. At the same time we have increased the tax bonus you receive when your people have a high quality of life.



Over the course of the last years Imagine Earth has become a quite complex game. A part of this complexity is how productivity is influenced by nearby buildings and local factors like ground fertility.

With this update we are introducing a new info panel that is shown when a building is clicked. It sums up the productivity and lists all the influencing factors and their strength. This will make it a lot easier for you to understand what is going on and how to increase the production output of your colony.



The second part of this is how the quality of life in cities is influenced. A high quality of life will give you a tax bonus and a low quality will decrease your income.

Buildings like the park district, health district and campus district increase the quality of life in surrounding districts. Other factors will decrease it. The new info panel lists the details on this, so you always know what's going on.



Finally the former building info panel in the bottom left of the UI is replaced with a minimal version that shows the building's / object's name for the selected field and its production value / remaining resources.

• You can open the build ring by right-clicking on any field now
  
• Added explanations for epidemics
  
• Bookmark panel no longer "clicks through"
  
• Research and development panels no longer change the planet zoom level
  
• Visualization for items received during the mission
  
• Changed influence area visualization for cannons, shield, fire stations and more
  
• Fixed city car animation problems