The Colonists: New Lands DLC is out now!

Hi everyone,

I'm super happy to announce that the first expansion pack for The Colonists is now live!

[h2]New Lands DLC[/h2]
New Lands brings new ways for your robots to move around the map and expand their colonies. Bridges can span gaps short and large, train tunnels let you access cut off areas and there are various new buildings as well as a priestbot to give your colonists a productivity boost!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2784480/The_Colonists__New_Lands/

There's a new challenging campaign where your goal is to find and rescue the crashed colony ships of your anthrobotic cousins and unlock some snazzy new custom colours for your colonies along the way too.

All these new features can also be played with random maps, in sandbox mode as well as enabled in the custom maps you make in the map editor and that can be published to Steam Workshop. I'm looking to forward to seeing all the new maps and mods!

[h2]Multiplayer[/h2]
Multiplayer will be coming to The Colonists on May 9th! There'll be PvP and co-op modes as well as different game types for long or short games so stay tuned for more updates on that.

[h2]V1.8[/h2]
V1.8 brings a few updates to the base game, some QoL tweaks, UI improvements and gameplay tweaks. Also the details are listed in the Release note below.

Once again thank you to all the community members providing invaluable feedback and to everyone doing amazing work on the translations. If you're like to make a suggestion, or have spotted an issue, head over to the Discord server or email me at dev[at]codebyfire.com.

I hope you enjoy it and I'll be back with April's Frontier and more multiplayer news soon!

Thanks!

[h3]V1.8 Release Notes[/h3]

Bridges - Allow your bots to traverse over small and large distances using wooden, iron and steel bridges
Train Tunnels - Reach previously inaccessible locations or create shortcuts by tunnelling through hills and mountains
Floating Watchtower - Claim territory on usually inaccessible shorelines and use to attack enemies from the sea
Church & Missionary Outpost - Generate Holy Energy which can be used by the priestbot to give blessings to buildings, increasing the worker bots' productivity
Fishing Station - Send a fishing boat out to fishing spots to harvest fish and lobster, a new luxury food for L3 residences
Mint - Produce gold coins to use at the workshop to research repeatable technologies
Repeatable Techs - Research the same tech multiple time for cumulative boosts
New 6 Map Campaign - Four peaceful and two military maps in new campaign
Unlockable Colony Colour Schemes - Unlock colourful new schemes for your colonies through the campaign

Base Game Updates
Gameplay - Significantly boosted output of L2 & L3 lumberjacks huts and L2 & L3 surface mines
Gameplay - Added fadeout to trees when placing roads, paths or building nearby so you can now more easily see what you're doing
Gameplay - New terrain type: mud - allows road and path placement but not buildings
Gameplay - New terrain type: prairie - allows animal grazing but not crop placement
Gameplay - New victory condition type - locate crashed colony ship(s) that are placed somewhere on the map
Gameplay - Rewrote cost calculation system for roads to allow better spreading of resources over alternative routes
Gameplay - When calculating transport route for a resource to a building, it now searches all possibilities from solution road post, avoiding a potentially slightly longer route
Gameplay - Fixed particular instance where, when placing a road over a kink in the terrain, it would break an adjacent road tile connection
Trains - Rail track can now be placed outside your territory
Trains - Train stations can now be placed onto existing track
Trains - Train stations now show potential track when placing
Trains - [Ctrl] and click a track section to starting building from it
Trains - Improved track height overlay graphics when placing track
Trains - Fixed floor graphic of 'Slope In Out' section
Game UI - Split food buildings into two separate sections
Game UI - Added sub graphic for arrived resources to bar progress to boatyard panel
Map Editor - New market panel allowing custom settings for any resource
Map Editor - New map panel showing top down overview and list of all resources on the map, similar to the in-game version
Map Editor - Added sandbox options when testing a map
Map Editor - Significantly improved edges when terrain painting (still not 100% perfect but a lot better!)
Map Editor - Added a contour mode back in
Map Editor - Improvement visuals for player colony ship placement with option to show initial territory
Map Editor - Much improved victory condition panel
Map Editor - Much improved players panel
UI - New main menu layout
UI - New save/load game panel with thumbnails, metadata and improved performance
UI - Improved performance when loading local scenarios
UI - Improved placement of individual tech info panel on research panel
General - improved loading time when opening the game
General - improved loading time when loading a savegame