Colony Survival News

0.8.0 has been released two weeks ago. Many of you have tried it, and we've received a lot of enthusiastic replies. We're very grateful for them! We weren't completely certain that replacing the Happiness System with Colony Points was a good move, but it seems to have turned out well.

Despite that, we don't know exactly what your experience is like. We've tried it ourselves, and because we know exactly how the feature works, we rushed through the content pretty quickly. For us, it was relatively easy to gain large amounts of Colony Points. On the other hand: we've watched the Yogscast play it, and it took them quite long before they really started using the new system. Which makes a lot of sense: they didn't design the system! We've also received reports from people who say that it takes them a lot longer to set up their colony now, and that they find it hard to earn enough Colony Points.

So we'd love to receive more detailed reports. Is the game harder/slower than it was in 0.7.0? Is it difficult to figure out the new systems? And how does the difficulty feel at different "colonist levels": is it hard to get from 0 to 50 but easy to go from 100 to 150, or vice versa? Please let us know, here in the comments, or on Discord!



As explained last week, we're working on a Job Management Menu. This should make it possible to temporarily disable jobs, and to make sure new recruits take the right jobs. This is helpful in general, but crucial when your colony fails and lose a lot of colonists, resulting in lots of empty jobs.

Our internal dev-build now has a new prototype-menu that tests new features and offers new possibilities. It's possible to disable all jobs with one click. Another button automatically re-enables jobs and properly balances different jobs while taking into account how many colonists you have - to make sure you've got some wheat farmers and some bakers, instead of only bakers, for example.

We're planning to add sliders to this menu that allow players to manually reduce the amount of 'open job slots' per job type. Imagine you've got 8 flax farmers and a surplus of flax: you could decide to temporarily 'fire' 4 flax farmers, assigning them to different jobs, while the rest keeps working.



Last but not least, once again we're thinking "one update ahead". What will we do after 0.8.1 and the Job Management Menu? One interesting idea is "Special Monster Waves". Imagine a menu with a list of special wave attacks. A specific amount of strong, special monsters attacks your colony. Defeating such a wave unlocks special rewards. Perhaps the reward is 'Monster Points', or maybe it's required to defeat such waves before you can do specific upgrades.

The monsters could have special traits. Think of boss monsters with thousands of HP, or monsters with armor that require lots of damage or specific weapon types to break them. There could be new types of guards that do fire, poison or area of effect damage.

There are a lot of dilemmas to consider. Do the new monster types also appears in regular nights, outside of the "Special Monster Waves"? Do guards automatically choose the right ammo and the right strategy, or does the player have to manually decide how the special monsters are fought? If everything happens automatically, it might not be very interesting and engaging. On the other hand, if players have to do manual adjustments and assignments, and the special monsters appear every night, this might get tedious and repetitive very quickly.

We're unsure how to approach this, and your suggestions are welcome!

Bedankt voor het lezen :D

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Last week, we released the new update! In general, it seems to have received a positive response. Old worlds required some adjustments but were compatible, there were no serious bugs and a large majority seems to feel like the Points System is an improvement compared to the old Happiness System.

Of course, there were minor problems. So we quickly released 0.8.0.1. Colonists got stuck when they couldn't find food on their grocery visit, while their hunger wasn't critical yet. This has been fixed. The "Upgrades" tab received the more fitting name "Colony Points". The Colony Points counter in the top-right of the screen is formatted #/#, to indicate current points / current points capacity. This made the "/" in the ammo counter confusing, so the dividing symbol between different ammo types is now a "-".

A couple of days later, we released 0.8.0.2 to fix some other minor issues. For example, the stockpile still had a "Calories" filter button, and this has been updated to "Meals". The "woodcoating" item was still around but was not used anymore, and it has been removed. Clicking on a grocery store didn't properly open the Colony Points tab - now it does.

Another important event this week was the start of the Jingle Jam! Colony Survival is part of the bundle, and the Yogscast has been playing the game for many hours last Wednesday. They seem to have enjoyed themselves, but there was one noticeable issue. Someone's colony failed a bit and lost a lot of colonists. Recovering was relatively hard, because there were a lot of empty jobs and it was hard to sent new recruits to the right ones.

The same issue has occured frequently for other players, and we're resolved to fix this. We're working on a "Job Priority Menu" that should give players more control over jobs, making it possible to temporarily 'disable' unimportant ones so that new colonists automatically take the important jobs. Developing this shouldn't take too much time, and the feature will be released in 0.8.1!

Bedankt voor het lezen :D

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Colony Survival is part of the Jingle Jam 2020 Bundle! The Jingle Jam is organized by the Yogscast, who have played lots of Colony Survival since the very beginning. The proceeds will be donated to charity, with some examples being The Mental Health Foundation, The Open Bionics Foundations and War Child UK.

Tomorrow, Colony Survival should be part of multiple streams! We're looking forward to seeing them play 0.8.0. Watch their main channel here, and check their schedule below:



Have fun!

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The new update is now live on Steam! If Steam doesn't update automatically, use "verify integrity of game cache" to force it download the update.

Update 0.8.0 contains fundamental new systems that will change the way you play. The Happiness System has been replaced by Colony Points. They are earned by distributing Meals and Luxury Items. Instead of having to fiddle around with sliders, this happens automatically now. The confusing "calories" sliders is also gone now. Snacks like cake and chocolate have lost their food value, and the colonists require one proper meal per day.

The old system strongly disincentivized population growth. Happiness Items provided a set amount of Happiness if every colonist received a certain amount of items, regardless of the amount of colonists in the colony. This meant that bigger colonies needed to produce more items to gain the same amount of Happiness. Simultaneously, recruiting more colonists caused Unhappiness due to overpopulation. This made earning Happiness very difficult and counter-intuitive.

Colony Points should do the opposite: they should reward growth. Recruiting more colonists makes it easier to produce and distribute lots of Meals & Happiness Items, resulting in many more Colony Points. These Points can be spent on a range of upgrades. These upgrades have many levels, with rapidly escalating costs. Colony Points are also required for certain unlocks in the tech tree.

These core changes also cause a range of smaller changes. The tech tree has been overhauled. Some unlocks have been merged, others have new requirements. Certain minor items, like the separate coating item required for coating planks, and "fishmeal", have been removed. Other items have been rebalanced. The F1-Quickstart-Menu has been updated, and some achievements related to food, happiness and the tech tree have been changed or removed as well. For full details, check the in-game changelog.

Now that the game has new core systems, it has become easier to add new content. We're planning to add new sources of Colony Points, and new ways to spend them. And of course, we'll be listening to your feedback! Tell us what works and what doesn't, and we'll use that to improve the game in future updates.

Heel veel plezier in 0.8.0 :D

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The release of the next update, 0.8.0, is scheduled for next Friday! We've done a lot of testing, fixing and recalibrating this week. The new Colony Points system isn't perfect yet, but it should be better, more rewarding, more intuitive and more accessible than the current Happiness/Calories system.

Despite that, last week's blog received a fair amount of criticism. We want to take a moment to respond to these concerns.

[h3]"The new system is less realistic"[/h3]
Agreed! It's less 'grounded', it's more game-like. We understand that it seems less appealing to 'grind points' instead of satisfying the concerns of your colonists. But the fact that it's a bit less realistic and more game-like should make it easier for players to understand and use.

We understand the appeal of the old happiness system - otherwise, we would've never taken the effort to develop and implement it. But in practice, it has never lived up to our expectations. It's not intuitive because it runs on some very strange logic (items generate a set amount of happiness regardless of your amount of colonists, and thus regardless of how many items you've got to produce). It punishes people for growing their colony and recruiting more colonists. It's hard to understand for many players, especially the "Calories-Slider". This is probably a large cause of the reason why only a small minority of all players actually reach the "end of content".

We've tried to make the system more intuitive, but we've finally decided to fix the root cause (the wonky system itself) instead of addressing the symptoms. We understand that the new system might not sound as appealing, but we believe the reworked incentives work a lot better in-game. The system is still pretty bare-bones, but we're planning to make it even better in the near future, both more satisfying to use and with more exciting rewards.

0.8.0 isn't merely an addition, it's a fundamental change, and that means that we're also losing some of the benefits of the older systems. We've tried to avoid that as much as possible, but we feel that the benefits of the new system are big enough to justify it.



[h3]"Why are you changing these systems instead of adding new content?"[/h3] A handful of blogs ago, we released the results of our survey. They indicated that while most players would like to see some new content, their actual highest priority is better progression systems, a more engaging way to 'hook' the player. We were already suspecting that (because most players don't reach the earlier mentioned end of content), and are now working to improve this.

Another problem is the fact that the old Happiness system was not a stable foundation to work from. It worked in a highly specific way, and in itself, it was already too complex for a sizeable part of the community. Lots of players simply disabled it. The new system has been developed with these lessons and the future in mind. It should be easier to integrate new subsystems in it, like a system with different levels of beds and daily rewards for providing your colonists with better beds.

We understand that some players (especially those who have learned to work with the current happiness system) may feel like our priorities are misguided. Don't be too worried: we're planning to start working on actual content again relatively soon :)

[h3]-----[/h3]
We're really looking forward to seeing your reactions to 0.8.0, and we're planning to enhance and extend the new systems a lot further based on your experiences. We hope 0.8.0 will be the stable foundation that was lacking in 0.7.0, and are hoping to build a lot of exciting features on that new foundation. If you've still got concerns, questions, or feedback, please respond in the comments or on Discord!

Bedankt voor het lezen :D

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