Colony Survival News

Holy cow, last week's survey resulted in a lot of participation and discussion! The blog now has nearly 100 comments, and the survey is at 888 responses. All of this has been very insightful, so thanks a lot! Like always, we'll share all the results with you.

Nearly all questions asked participants to rate something from 1 to 7, with 1 being "awful" and 7 being "great". The first question was:
[h3]Imagine the "magical stockpile" gets fully removed. All items need to be physically transported from A to B, with a combination of something like delivery men, conveyor belts and trains. How would you rate this change?[/h3]


A vast majority of players rates this change positively, and out of this majority, a large share has picked "7", the most positive option available. This is great to hear, and it's making us more confident in implementing this change.

[h3]We could leave the early game like it is, and constrain "items that need transportation" to later in the game. This means there are "two systems" in the game. What's your opinion?[/h3]


To prevent disappointing players who don't like realistic logistics, we've proposed having two different systems in-game. This was rated rather negatively. In the comments, multiple people suggested making logistics a "toggleable" option. This will probably be difficult to develop, but there might be a great alternative. If logistics gets implemented, we need to assign each item a weight or volume. Hopefully, we could relatively easily make an alternate option where all items have significantly less weight, making them a lot easier to transport.

[h3]We could focus on other features that have less impact on the core gameplay, and reserve the ideas about logistics for a potential sequel. How do you feel about that?[/h3]


The alternative, not implementing logistics in Colony Survival (1), is even more impopular. Good news: we're probably not going to do what this question proposes, and we're very strongly considering to start working on realisitc logistics in CS(1) soon!

[h3]Logistics "inside" colonies could function like they always did, with the "magical stockpile", while trade between colonies receives an overhaul. Here you'll have to build paths between colonies, with tunnels and bridges, and for long distances, safe sleeping places for the travelling colonists. What's your opinion?[/h3]


We're back to more popular proposals! This seems to be a very viable option.
[h3]
The idea above could also be combined with realistic logistics inside of the colony. How do you feel about having both?[/h3]


Yet implementing realistic logistics everywhere gets an even better response. There's one drawback: it's a bit more polarized, with more very excited voters, and simultaneously more participants who rate this suggestion "awful". The amount of votes for "1" went from 27 to 37.

[h3]How do you feel about a feature that allows players to "clear" the world of monsters (but, for example, forcing them to defeat the same amount of monsters at a portal), allowing them to safely expand in a much wider area than just the safe zone?[/h3]


Monsters portals get a more muted response. It's still generally positive, but significantly less compared to the two previous questions. We get it, it's a bit of a strange workaround. We've got some new ideas, but we're not exactly sure how to implement them. Still, we think it would be great if players could use a lot more area in the world, without having to place guards absolutely everywhere.

[h3]What's your opinion about the addition of delivery men as a feature, who bring items from one stack of crates to another?[/h3]


Delivery men get a "regular positive" response. Not extremely excited, but not seriously conflicted either.

[h3]Should these delivery men mainly work automatically (based on the needs of workers), or mainly based on the explicit orders and requests of the player?[/h3]


This was the one exception in the entire survey. Instead of 1 to 7 being 'awful' to 'great', the options here were 1 to 5, representing "Automatically" to "Player controlled". The most popular response is right in the middle, which makes sense. Many systems in the game currently work relatively autonomously, but with the option for the player to intervene. Outside of the most popular response, most participants favor automation above explicit player control.

The last five questions have been combined in one chart. They all ask the same question, about five different subjects.
[h3]What's your opinion about the addition of conveyor belts / trains / ships / zeppelins / pipelines?[/h3]


Up till these questions, no proposal got even close to 400 votes for option 7. But here, both (automated, transport) "trains" and "ships" received 502 votes! It's great to see this amount of enthusiasm :D Conveyor belts and zeppelins received the most "conflicted" response, although it's still largely positive. Ships got the most appreciation. We think this has to do with "timeline issues"; people who feel that more modern tech doesn't fit Colony Survival. A topic for another blog :D

Bedankt voor het lezen!

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Participate in the survey here!

This week, we've been doing a lot of thinking about the plans proposed in last week's Friday Blog. We received a lot of positive replies, and we've gotten more confident in implementing them.

But simultaneously, we've noticed how some of these features are fundamentally linked to other major changes in the game. This would mean that Colony Survival could become a significantly different game than it currently is. Instead of adding new features while not changing the core, these plans could mean that fundamental systems will be radically overhauled.

One of the most significant changes we're considering, is an overhaul to the stockpile and logistics. Currently, the stockpile operates like a 'cloud server'. Miners deep underground 'upload' their items using a nearby crate. Smelters above ground don't have to descend into the mines to gather their ores: they can just 'download' the ores using any random crate.

While this system is easy to operate and pretty intuitive, it also deprives players of a large amount of interesting challenges. Jobs can be placed without much consideration in tall, ugly skyscrapers with no impact on efficiency.

So many interesting things in real life are related to the problem of getting items and people from A to B. Ships, trains, harbors, bridges, tunnels, highways, cars, conveyor belts, elevators. The entire concept of cities is intrinsically linked to the necessity to be physically close to important places.

The “magic stockpile” in Colony Survival deprives players of all of these things. There is no necessity to consider the location of your industries. There is no benefit to building realistic supply chains, like placing your smelters next to your miners. Trading between colonies is purely UI-work, and it doesn’t matter whether there is a huge distance between the colonies or that they’re in sight of each other.

Demanding that items are ‘physically’ transported from one place to another changes all of this. The location of your jobs will have a large impact on the efficiency of your colony. Suddenly, features like (upgradeable) delivery men, trains, conveyor belts and elevators become useful. This gives us a lot of opportunities for the development of interesting new features.



But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It will make the game more complex, and the start of the game becomes more difficult for new players. The update will probably be incompatible with older worlds, or at least it’ll radically change their efficiency. (Older branches of the game are available for download via Steam, meaning it’s always possible to replay old worlds and old versions with a low amount of effort) Colony Survival will become a different game, and some older players will be disappointed. Is this worth it? Should we implement these big changes in Colony Survival, or should we leave the core gameplay intact and reserve these ideas for a potential sequel?

Another big change is linked to realistic logistics. When transportation of items becomes more important and challenging, it makes sense to “open up” a bigger part of the world, to allow the logistics to play out over a larger area. Currently, players are constrained to a relatively small “safe zone” in a huge open world. We’ve been thinking about ways to allow players to make use of a much larger part of the world, without worrying about safe zones and monsters. Imagine a feature that allows players to build a large “monster-portal”. When it’s activated, monsters won’t spawn “in the wild” anymore - they’ll only spawn at the portal and travel to your banner from there. You’ll still need to defeat the same amount of monsters, but you’re free to use a much larger part of the world without caring about safe zones, walls and stationing guards everywhere.

This could allow us to spread different resources around the world more. Currently, all main ores are available everywhere. But imagine having to mine gold and iron at different places, and growing wheat in a third place, and making sure there is proper transportation between all these places - with paths and bridges for travelling colonists, inns along the way to provide a sleeping place, and perhaps automated ships and harbors, perhaps trains!

We’re very excited about this idea, but simultaneously realize what a big change to “standard Colony Survival” this would be. Without the “magic stockpile” and monsters everywhere, it becomes a different game. Is this a game you’re all looking forward to? Do you want this change in this Colony Survival or is it more appropriate for a sequel?

We’d love to have your feedback. As always, we read the comments and our Discord is open for discussion, but we’d also love to have your feedback on the survey!

Bedankt voor het lezen!

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Survival Lab REC-5, by Littlesproatie

Happy New Year! The start of the week saw the release of 0.8.1. It seems not to have caused significant issues. There was a missing button, but that was fixed in a small patch. We hope the new Job Management Menu will be very useful for all of you!

This blog showcases screenshots from Littlesproatie's Survival Lab REC-5, a survival map with a unique story. It's available on the Workshop! It requires three mods to function, developed by NACH0, Adrenalynn, Kenovis and Boneidle. These are all linked on the Workshop page for the Survival Lab and can be installed easily. Thanks to the creators for building this world and the mods, and have fun building a colony in this futuristic world!

While working on some smaller bugs and fixes, we're thinking of our next big step. What feature should we add? We're discussing a bunch of related ideas. Some have been mentioned before, others not. We'd love to have your feedback. What ideas are you most excited for?

[h3]Support for Longer Crafting Times[/h3]

Currently, 'colonist actions' like crafting and mining cannot take longer than ~15 seconds. This is to prevent colonists getting stuck at their workplace while night falls and monsters are approaching. But this also means no ore can take longer to mine and no item can take longer to craft. This is of course pretty silly and unrealistic, and it leads to workarounds like items having a bunch of costly requirements (lots of copper nails and iron rivets, for example). We hope to add a feature that makes it possible to "subdivide" item crafting: imagine a matchlock gun taking 10 cycles of 15 seconds to craft.

When this has been added, we can immediately alter crafting recipes to make more sense and be less confusing. It also allows us to add new "Colony Points Upgrade Paths", reducing the crafting time of these items. Last but not least, it makes it more worthwhile to add industrial content, with complex machines that can radically speed up your crafting.



[h3]More ways to earn and spend Colony Points[/h3]

Colony Points are still a new feature and could use some more flesh on their bones. We're thinking about for example different tiers of beds that produce a nightly boost to your point income, and the upgrades to crafting efficiency mentioned above.

[h3]Industrial Tech[/h3]

A long held dream of us, we'd love to add a new era to the game, with more modern tech. Players should be able to process oil and generate electricity. Perhaps there'll even be nuclear energy and primitive computers. We're thinking about the best way to implement this: there should be some new mechanics that allow players to make their own designs, with various benefits for different configurations. Simultaneously, these mechanics shouldn't be too difficult too understand.

[h3]Real Logistics[/h3]

Currently, there's a "magical stockpile" that immediately "transports" items from one crate to another. We could make it so that items have to be physically moved from place A to place B. This will force players to rethink the design of their colonies, and could allow for new features like 'delivery colonists', conveyor belts and 'item-elevators'. Perhaps the current content will still use the 'magical stockpile', with new industrial content requiring physical transport. We're still debating the best solution!



[h3]A Mission/Quest-System[/h3]

We lack a decent, in-game tutorial. We'd love to add a system that introduces players to all features, step by step. This should start with small steps like "recruit 4 berry gatherers", and end with missions like "start a colony in the Far East". These missions could have rewards like Colony Points, or be required for specific unlocks. Although the drawback is that this makes the system very essential, and perhaps it should be optional, so more experienced players can disable it. Perhaps there are "repeating missions", like "produce 1000 meals", "survive 10 nights" or "defeat 500 monsters".

[h3]New Guards, new Monsters and Monster Waves[/h3]

There are only a handful of guards and monster types in-game, at the moment. We'd love to add new ones. These could be tied to for example the industrial era. We're also thinking of having special monster waves, that have to be manually activated by the player. These monster waves should be extra difficult, and perhaps have their own special monster types and unique defense mechanics. They should give great rewards to those who manage to defeat them.

[h3]Parallel Worlds[/h3]

Last but not least, but probably least likely of all features mentioned here, are parallel worlds. Imagine a special teleporter at the end of the industrial era, that consumes huge amounts of energy to teleport you to a different world. These other worlds could have wildly different terrain generation, atmospheres or challenges. Your primary colony is required to produce the prerequisites to survive in or support the other worlds. Start a colony on Mars, a radioactive hellhole or a floating paradise!

All of the features mentioned above are rough ideas, not specific plans for 2021. Let us know which one are your favorites and why! If you want to improve an idea, or if you think you've got a better plan, let us know! We read all comments under the blogs, and if you want an active discussion, Discord is the best place. We're online there a lot of the time.

Gelukkig Nieuwjaar :)

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Update 0.8.1 is now live on Steam! It's main new feature is the Job Management Menu. It provides an overview of all current jobs, and allows players to remotely disable and enable them without physically removing the job. This is useful in general, but vital when you've lost a large amount of colonists and want to recover your colony. To help players deal with a shortage of colonists, there's the Set Balanced button, which intelligently distributes your colonists across all available jobs.

Apart from the new feature, there's a long list of bug fixes and small tweaks. The "garbage can" has moved from the hotbar to just below the stockpile, to prevent accidental trashing of items. Your health is now properly saved when health upgrades have been unlocked and you exit the game. Colonists don't 'refund' their 'job tool' to the stockpile anymore when they die. See the in-game changelog for more info.

Have fun with the update, and let us know when things work and don't work as you hoped! For pressing bug fixes, Discord and the comments under this blog are the best place.

Veel plezier :)

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This week has been fully focused on bug fixes and other small issues that players have noticed in 0.8.0. In the past, players have complained about Siege Mode activating when they left their colony to explore the world. This happened pretty randomly, and we weren't able to consistently reproduce the bug. This week, we received a savegame where the issue did happen reliably! We expect this will help us fix the problem.

Update 0.8.1 will contain these bug fixes, and the Job Management Menu. We hope to be able to release the update on Monday!

[h2]2020 - Specific and Without Covid[/h2]

Halfway last year, July 2019, we released 0.7.0, the biggest overhaul and content update the game had ever seen. It introduced many new features and menus that needed adjustment and improvement. We learned a lot from watching your experiences and hearing your feedback, so thanks a lot for that!

Many updates were released to help finetune and improve 0.7.0. At the end of 2019, 0.7.1 added Steam Workshop support. In February 2020, we released 0.7.2, which contained a big overhaul to the way shadows were calculated and torch lights were rendered. A couple of months later, in May, 0.7.3 added the statistics menu.

August saw the release of 0.7.4, which changed a large part of the UI. Lots of menus were “work-in-progress” and pretty ugly, and 0.7.4 tried to improve that significantly. It also added new functionality, like support for UI scaling, the ability to trash items in the stockpile, and the option to convert worlds from SP to MP and back.

0.7.5 was released in October, and it updated how colonists choose their goals and find their paths. The new compass item hopefully does the same for players. Last but not least, we released 0.8.0 at the end of November, which replaces the old Happiness feature with Colony Points! This update was just in time for the Jingle Jam, where the Yogscast played Colony Survival for a large audience. The bundle earned millions for charity and brought a lot of new players into the game.

This is just a short summary of the biggest changes made this year. For a full list of all changes, see the in-game changelog!

Despite all the problems in the ‘general’ world this year, it has been a good year for Colony Survival. We’ve fixed things we wanted to fix, we’ve added features we’re excited about, new players have joined the community, long time players have stuck around, and we’re looking forward to adding new content in 2021 (and we’re even making serious plans for the years after 2021!).

Your participation has been essential in that process. Your feedback, your purchase, your recommendations to friends, your participation in the community - all of it has been immensely valuable. We’re very grateful, so thanks a million for making all of this possible! We wish you a very merry Christmas, and an amazing 2021.



[h2]2020 - Vague and With Covid[/h2]

We live in the Netherlands. For our entire lives, this has been a stable and tranquil place. That changed in 2020. In January, we saw weird videos emerging from China. Patients on the streets? Apartments being welded shut? It was worrisome, but we expected the problem to stay contained in the region. In February, we got anxious when the virus started spreading west. First Iran, then Italy. Would it reach the Netherlands - and then, what?

In March, things quickly escalated from the first handful of patients, to overwhelmed hospitals and a lockdown. We had never experienced something like this, and we were very worried. But Spring quickly arrived, and the amount of cases dwindled again.

But as Summer ended and the temperatures dropped, the amount of cases rose again. Thousands of people have died, normal life reached a standstill and the hospitality industry has been closed for months now. We’ve failed to contain the virus, and now suffer the consequences. It’s a frustrating situation, and it leads to difficult personal choices.

It also leads to a lot of philosophizing related to the game. Colony Survival is a “society simulation” - players build their own little city or kingdom. They’ve got to make choices to keep their colony safe and productive. The current crisis gives valuable insights into the way societies try to manage that, and how some succeed and others fail. We haven’t found specific ways to implement these insights, but I’m sure they’ll influence future developments (indirectly, we’re not planning to add literal pandemics as a feature).

[h3]A Calm Game?[/h3]

We’ve also noticed how playing Colony Survival is in some ways the inverse experience of 2020. Unlike games like Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, we don’t have “random” events disturbing your colony. Mistakes can cause a chaotic cascade of failures, but the core of the game is pretty stable and predictable. So while 2020 feels like a messy chaos that you don't have any control over, your colony in CS is a predictable place where you’ve got full power.

Some players have asked for more ‘chaos’ in Colony Survival - unexpected events that require quick and correct responses. That’s certainly a valid and sensible request, and a potential direction in which to develop. But we’re currently convinced that it’s best to “stay the course”: the ‘stability’ of your colony is an essential part of the ‘soul’ of the game, a core reason why many players enjoy it. Of course, this doesn't mean the game shouldn't be challenging. With the upcoming Job Management Menu, it's easier to recover from a loss of colonists - giving us more "room" to disrupt your colony in that way. We're also thinking about "voluntary chaos", like monster waves that have do be deliberately summoned by the player.

Do you recognize this feeling and agree with us? Or are we mistaken? Let us know!

[h3]Dune[/h3]

Last but not least, we’ve both been reading the Dune book series this year, and we’re enjoying them immensely. An impressive thing about the books, is the relatedness of everything. On one hand, the book is concerned with huge things, like the ecology of entire planets, genetic lines over hundreds of years, religious reorganizations and the way governments are structured. On the other hand, the book also focuses on little details, from forehead wrinkles and the way certain words are intoned to the effects of tiny plants and animals. The book manages to connect all of these to the central plot.

We would love to move in that direction. The way in which everything in Dune interacts with and affects each other, how the availability of resources shapes society and individual humans, and vice versa - it sounds like the perfect game. On the other hand, directly transferring these ideas to implementable features is hard. Once again, we don’t know yet how it will influence future developments, but we’re sure it’ll have an impact.

Thanks for reading that entire wall of text! :D Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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