Hi guys, the latest update is here. Here are the big hitters:
Additional staff orders
This month's update comes with two new features increasing the possibilities for staff management.
The first is the ability to disallow your staff from using certain items or tasks which 'require skill'. The most immediate use of this is prohibiting your less experienced staff members from taking on the tricky jobs such as 'high skill required' tasks and supplements.
You can find these new controls under the Advanced tab after selecting a staff member. You can also right-click on a staff portrait directly from the staff management window.
I'm looking forward to seeing what other uses players come up with for using this new feature!
Important tasks
The second new feature is the ability to mark a task as 'important' by clicking on its task bubble.
This will make staff prioritise this task over all others regardless of distance away. However, it will not overrule the role priority or zoning orders. Therefore, if a staff member has the feeding role set to a higher priority than the fixing role, they will still do all feeding tasks before fixing tasks, even if one of them has been flagged as important.
Auto-feeder change
The Auto-Feeder has undergone a significant change. It now refills automatically at the beginning of each day so it does not have to be filled by staff anymore.
To make up for this, they will break down from time to time and the associated fixing staff is 'very high skill required' so it will be awkward to use unless you have skilled fixing staff available.
In addition the Auto-Feeder can no longer feed animals which 'require skill' or feed Supplements to any animals. Both these types of feeding task still need to be done by hand.
I like this change quite a lot. The Auto-Feeder clearly works best to replace the role of low-level feeders. It can handle large quantities but struggles with higher level animals which 'require skill' and supplements.
At the same time it puts additional pressure on your skilled fixers so there'll be some interesting decisions to make here.
It also might add interesting curation decisions: will you design a tank that can be fed 100% by Auto-Feeders at the cost of leaving out that show-stopping fish?
Prestige tweaks
This update brings some tweaks to the prestige generation formulas which I believe bring it more in line with what you would expect from a real-life aquarium.
More information in the changelog below and also in the latest dev vlog.
https://youtu.be/N_dGVIxXSv0
Full changelog
- Tweaked prestige generation rates so that larger animals have a greater success chance than small animals. In other words, you need less in a tank for them to be seen.
- Likewise, larger decoration items have a higher chance to be seen, reducing the need for many large items in a single tank which could look less appealing. Groups of small items are still encouraged.
- Tweaked the prestige generation rates so that you get diminishing returns, the more animals of the same type you add to a tank. This encourages more smaller groups of small fish in different tanks.
- However for large animals a single group will continue to be sufficient.
- Added a more detailed tooltip when you hover over the prestige icon on any animal so that it communicates the prestige generation mechanics better, allowing the player to make more informated decisions.
- Added option for window to close when you click a second time, this is also now the default option but can be switched off in the settings.
- Changed "requires skill" icon to military chevrons. Added this indicator to task bubbles so you can see the skill level of a task at a glance
- Auto-feeder changes color depending on what food it is feeding.
- Reduced some animal aquascaping requirements. Many of these were increased in the February update but I believe they threw the balance off especially for small animals which need to be kept in larger numbers to fulfil their prestige potential.
- Added additional details to the task bubble tooltip so that it lists the skill level and a breakdown of the animals that need feeding in the tank (for feeding tasks only).
- Added load game confirmation dialog if a game is already in progress.
- Facilities apply their effects to guests instantly now, rather than over time.
- Fixed paint glitch
- Stopped guests dropping rubbish straight after looking at something
- Added reset to default key bindings
- Increased cave value for gaping cavern
- Increased rock value for rubble and live rubble
- Increased starting money for level 3. Elmshorn
- Fixed so the search menu doesn't come up when you finish naming something.
- In sandbox, all side objectives, trades and merchants appear on the way to rank 12. Before they continued to appear above Rank 12 but this led to some confusion and missing some events.
- Sped up zooming with keys.
- Fixed a pump UI error.
- Refresh message count immediately when you delete group of messages.
- Fixed 'running on spot' bug when auto saving and returning to menu.
- Fixed bug where supplement feeding times were sometimes over-calculated.
- Fixed ground dweller eating animation.
- Shows skill numbers when you hover over skill bars in the manage tab.
- Fixed the positions of the skills in manage tab so they are always in the same places.
- Fixed bug where it would show "When fully grown" eat/damage information on animals even when no numbers change as they grow. For example, when an animal will damage Gorgonians or Stony Corals.
- You can open the advanced tab by right clicking on the portraits in the staff manage tab.
- Cursor texture only loaded once
- Decreased some coral sizes (affects food consumed, bioload and prestige generation rate). Note: growing corals to full size now has large effect on prestige because size determines the prestige generation chance.
- Added '=' as alternative to ':' in search box.
- Added 'equipment' as a search criteria to differentiate to animals.
- Fixed bug where end game credits could be interupted by pressing escape.
- Fixed bug where end game credits would be in 'fast-forward' mode if you were at that speed when you completed the game.
- Fixed bug to do with info/task bubble positioning on some objects.
- Fixed coral food box which had the wrong icon on it.
- Fixed Power Light so lights are in the correct position.
- Dropdown menus go in front of other information windows.
- Improved platform laying tool so it guesses the height your require more intelligently.
- Upgraded to Unity 2018.3.