Surviving Ceres News

Greetings Pilgrims;

For a while, I and other beta testers have been aggressively playing the game and generating feedback around the overall game loop and feel. Using that feedback, we have refined, changed, and improved many aspects of the game. The beta client now offers a smooth and relatively bug-free run from start to 100% terraforming, with all critical systems functioning well and the game loop itself feeling smooth and fun.

We will continue to refine recipes and other balance issues based on feedback, but I am very happy with the current state of the game. Here is a list of the affected aspects without going into too much detail.

- Modified the speed of the advanced farms growth of raw foods
- Many buildings, parts, and goods were unlocked at the start of the game to make transitioning to mid-game smoother
- Many recipes were reworked to be simpler and faster for players
- Changed from night and day shifts to one 16-hour shift for colonists to reduce complexity
- Made planting of foods continuous
- Fixed an issue that caused some buildings to incorrectly trigger mission objective completion
- Changed many item stack sizes and weight values
- Changed some supply drop contents to be better or worse in different cases
- Cleaned up some machine HUD displays to better give clarity to relevant information
- Changed, added, and moved many lights to better light facilities
- Greatly reduced crafting times for machines/facilities that require a lot of crafting such as the parts machine and refineries
- Fixed a ton of small bugs as well as major game-breaking bugs (too many to list)
- Changed several help entries to be more relevant
- Updated the cheat menu with more parts, ores, bars, and goods
- Increased storage capacity of many machines and facilities based on importance
- Reworked some milestones and fixed issues with milestones not firing correctly. All milestones can now be completed
- Fixed issues with certain aspects not returning items on deconstruction
- Added pop-up messages for when drills are destroyed by aliens
- Many changes to turrets, alien hit points, drill hit points, and everything related to attacks to make them feel fun but never oppressive on the player
- Reworked milestone funding rewards to be valid but to ensure exporting is a critical aspect of the game
- Significant changes to colonist AI, stats, perks, flaws, task systems, and more. They are still far from perfect, but functioning quite well
- Fixed some achievements that didn't fire correctly. All achievements can now be earned
- Changes to facility timers such as terraforming speed, missile cooldowns, and manufacturing times
- Fixed an issue that caused the barracks to have the advanced farm pre-placed visual
- Fixed issues with the mounted rail gun that prevented it from hitting targets when placed to farm away from your terraforming facility
- Reworked delay times for terraforming when failing to stop bombers
- Fixed many issues related to expeditions. To many to list, but they are now functioning perfectly minus the visual level design


With these changes, as well as the several smaller patches over the last few weeks the beta is in a really good place. There is still much refining to be done in terms of balance and we will continue to do so as we get feedback. However, the game is running great, can be completed, and never feels to boring in terms of grinding materials and items. While never feeling too easy to where you aren't forced to make decisions and earn your progression. This is a very difficult thing to get perfect, but your feedback has already given the game a huge step forward in that direction.

I am now confident enough in the game loop to move on to the modeling/visual side of the game. Over the next several months you can expect to see updates with new machines, props, set dressing, VFX, SFX, and overall polish brought to the game.

We still have a long road ahead, but I am very happy with the current state of the beta. If you would like to take part in the beta please join my discord and request a key. Thank you so much for your support, and have fun out there.

Greetings Pilgrims;

This is another small patch aimed at improving and smoothing out the game play experience. Here is a list of changes made.

- Unlocked Copper Dust in the grinder
- Unlocked Iron Dust in the grinder
- Increased the parts constructor inventory capacity
- increased the grinder inventory capacity
- Reworked copper frames to be easier to craft
- Removed Research cool down times
- Reduced refinery time for all bars
- Reworked a few mid-game structure costs
- Added Blocks Of Ice to the supply pod with refined materials
- Added a Refinery to the supply pod that contains base modules.

These changes are more to come are aimed at making all aspects of the game transition and run smoothly for players. Currently early-game feels pretty smooth,and the beginning of mid-game does as well. However, the transition from colonists arriving to tending to there needs and starting terraforming felt sluggish. These changes are aimed at smoothing out that transition.

We will continue to test and refine the experience over the next while, you can expect more small patches soon.

A few quick fixes and tweaks based on feedback. They are as follows;

- Removed an issue related to transferring all items to machines
- Fixed an issue where oxygen would not go to max capacity on loading
- Added funding to the main player inventory / stats menu
- Changed the export value for bars and manufactured export packages
- Added a message for rockets landing on Ceres
- Fixed an issue that allowed exported goods to re-appear when rocket was recalled from Earth
- Added Block of ice as a refined version of Ice
- Added Blocks of ice to a few recipes
- Tweaked some iron costs vs copper and ice (Game flow wise you needed significantly more iron than any other resource. I am attempting to smooth this out and have all three types be important more equally)
- Unlocked a few recipes to smooth out the flow from early to mid-game
- Changed the RND menu to be more clear and concise with less sub categories
- Increased storage capacity and refinery capacity
- A variety of colonists fixes and improvements to there AI and pathing (This is a tricky aspect to get right but with enough iteration we will get there)

We will be posting more small updates to further improve the game as an experience in the near future as we continue to test and iterate. Huge thank you to everyone helping with testing. If you want to join the beta pop into the discord and request a key.

Greetings Pilgrims;

The first round of translations have now been added to the game. These were done by me using machine translation. So, they won't be amazing, but they will allow our non-English players to get into the game, give feedback around formatting issues, and update translations to better suit each language.

There is also a variety of fixes based on feedback from beta players.

Thank you, and good luck to all our non-English players who have been waiting. I hope you can Survive on Ceres.

Greetings Pilgrims;

This update marks a big milestone for the game, as we are now virtually content ready for release. There is still a lot left to do in terms of balance, tweaking the experience, and the major visual overhaul, but mechanically, the game is looking great.

[h2]What Is In This Patch[/h2]

[h3]You Got Cut[/h3]

Some unused aspects and stats have been trimmed or temporarily removed. When I create certain things I over build in case we need additional complexity in certain systems. It is easier to trim out unnecessary complexity than it is to add it in later. So, for now certain things were trimmed such as tolerance, and game options.

[h3]I need Help[/h3]

The help glossary which contained 21 entries has been expanded to 76 entries. This makes the vast majority of topics and questions players might have readily available to be answered.

[h3]What Do I Do[/h3]

Mission objectives have been updated to be viable from start to finish, offering you an overarching idea of what to head towards next to progress. These main objectives don't hold your hand or ask for specific things, but they offer a general idea of what you need to reach next on your way to completion.

[h3]Miles of Milestones[/h3]

Much like the mission objectives milestones and their connected to steam achieves have been taken from 15 to 40. Milestones offer a cash payout for doing certain things, some of these things are related to beating the game and some are just optional things you may or may not do. Each gives an achievement when completed, a bit of funding, and posts your total score to the leaderboard.

[h3]Parts For Days[/h3]

Many new parts have been added to the parts constructor as well as manufactured goods to the advanced manufacturer and additional recipes were added to the grinder. These additions make new materials from the newly acquired resources expanding what recipes you need to craft advanced buildings and machines.

[h3]Recipe Overhaul[/h3]

All the advanced recipes have been overhauled using the newly created parts. This is still early stages and you can expect recipes to be modified as we test the game as an experience. I aim to offer meaningful progression that doesn't feel too tedious or too simple. This will take time to nail down, but the first draft of the recipes is now live.

[h3]Mission Guidance And Tips[/h3]

The small guidance and tips have been updated and extended into the late game. For those who want these tips, they will offer you some solid information to help you succeed on Ceres.

[h3]Death Is Inevitable[/h3]

Colonists can now die. Based on the newly added colonist hunger and thirst settings, colonists will now die if they receive no food or water for a long enough period. If they do receive food and water this will reduce their chances of death, but starving them now comes at a cost.

[h3]Power Updated[/h3]

All the new beta facilities were set to 0 MW of power usage to make life easy, but now as we move to test the game as a whole power requirements have been added. You will now need to produce enough power.

[h3]New Power[/h3]

To go along with this update to the power requirements of facilities I felt it necessary to add a new palceable power unit that didn't require colonists. I have added the "Hydro Power Converter". This unit is placed outside of your base and will only function if terraforming is beyond 25% (where rain can begin) and it generates 50 MW of power. It will be very helpful in the later stages of the game when power requirements begin to get high.

[h3]New Decorations[/h3]

I have added 4 new decorations. A custom poster, a custom sign, a GDM poster, and a GDM sign. These represent the 4 main types of decorations I plan to add. The custom posters can be placed on any wall, floor, or ceiling. Once placed you can open them up and choose a label and a directional arrow. This should help make your base easier to live in with a bit of signage. The custom sign is the same but placed outside. The GDM (Game Dev Masters) poster and sign are just art from my previous title on Steam "GDM". As part of the visual modeling update, we will add several unique decorations you can use to spruce up the walls and ground of your base, but for now, this is what is on offer.

[h3]Things Are Getting Difficult[/h3]

All new difficulty settings have been added related to colonist difficulty, alien attack difficulty, and frequency. These of course work in the difficulty multiplier used to calculate leader board score.

[h3]All Supplied[/h3]

The back supply boxes found in the cave with a 70% terraforming melting wall have been updated to contain some high-level parts and more. They are now a great pickup when you reach that threshold of terraforming.

[h3]Mutated Scorpion Update[/h3]

The mutated scorpions (Ground Severity 3 attacks) have been changed to now target your Hydro Power Convertors. With adding a new power unit, we needed them to be targets and the scorpion was hungry.

[h3]Isn't That Special[/h3]

The special materials gathered from expeditions and the firing of the missile silo can now be gained infinitely. This was added in case someone threw away a resource they would be essentially boned on that save. You can now re-clear expeditions or hand in more ballistic payloads for radioactive waste. You shouldn't need to do this, but just in case someone makes a whoops I wanted to have this covered.

[h3]Cheating Made Easy[/h3]

I have updated the Admin console accessible by the beta with all the new materials and resources, but it is now moved to the options menu and is called cheats. If you choose to enable cheats then you can no longer gain achieves or post to leaderboards, but for those who just want to try something out or whatever reason you have for cheating, it is now there. This also covers the need for a creative mode with less design time on my part. It isn't creative, but you can spawn with meter loss difficulty on NONE and cheat in any items, so it is a creative mode.

[h2]What Is Next[/h2]

Up next now that most of the menus and everything has been expanded and updated we will be looking to format all the HUDS for translations and begin to gather the text as well as post the first draft of translations. Once complete anyone who wishes to help with translations please feel free to reach out, I will have a document with all of the game's language ready to be translated. Thank you so much for your continued support, and I can't wait for the game to start taking shape with the visuals update starting shortly after translations.