1.0.1 Balance & UI Update
Hello!
Here's the 1.0.1 update. Namely, the version which probably should have been released initially, but well, hindsight is always 20/20.
On top of the usual improvements, tweaks and fixes, there are 2 main arcs for this update: a proper balance pass at the story mode while fixing its remaining problems, and the much requested job management tools.
Enjoy!
[h2]Story Mode[/h2]
The main change in this story-line is that there's a soft cap to the maximum amount of people you can control. This includes expeditions and workers at production center. The cap increases in each act. It's 25 people in the first act, 50 in act 2, 75 in act 3 and 150 in act 4. This is unique to story mode, the other scenarios and sandbox modes are still uncapped, obviously.
The rational for this change is pretty simple, it's to make this mode more difficult for veterans (limiting their ability to grind the whole world-map before moving to the next chapter) without complicating things for newcomers.
Additionally, you'll start the first act with an additional soldier-type settler, pushing your initial population to 8 survivors and giving you more than enough firepower to deal with literally anything the game can throw at you in the first few in-game weeks.
There are many more tweaks and fixes to the story stuff. Most will only apply when you switch to the next act (that's kind of a structural issue with the quest system) or start again.
[h2]Job Priority Menu[/h2]
As shown in the previous devlog, I reworked the job priority menu to include the list of currently queued jobs. There's not much to add, the menu is self explanatory enough.
[h2]Job Manager[/h2]
Here's the new job manager. It should be a lot more useful than its previous iteration. It's also much easier to read. I might still modify the UI further, because it's nowhere near as compact as I'd like it to be, but that will have to do for now.
So, you can select which jobs you want it to handle, while before it was kind of a all-or-nothing affair.
You can also tell it to make some of the entries "exclusive". Meaning that the people selected for a particular skill will only have this skill enabled. This is basically for the "Science" field. Enable it, set it to keep only the one best survivor, and check it to be exclusive. This way, your scientist will do science, and science only.
If you check the "Maintain Settings Automatically" checkbox, settings will be automatically reapplied each time you get a new survivor, or one dies, leaves, come back from an expedition, and so on. Basically, it does what it says on the box :)
But what if you want to set manual job settings on one (or multiple) of your survivors? Well you can do that too now!
See that check box at the bottom of the survivor's job menu? This is its purpose. Check it, and the job manager will completely ignore this survivor.
I can't stress this enough, though. There's no magic combination of jobs settings that will beat a base designed with proper depot and factory placement. Nine times out of ten, outside of farmers, scientists and medics, you'll just make things worse.
[h2]Notable Stuff[/h2]
I decreased the trade value of things like poison and tree seeds, as those were practically free money printing machines. I also halved the silk/poison production rate of tamed spiders/scorpions.
I also added a new booze with limited anti-sickness properties (I know, I know). It has a decent trade value, and can be made for relatively cheap with alcohol and poison (why not).
There's a lot more in the following changelog, which I encourage regulars to look at.
[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Artificial Intelligence[/h3]
Here's the 1.0.1 update. Namely, the version which probably should have been released initially, but well, hindsight is always 20/20.
On top of the usual improvements, tweaks and fixes, there are 2 main arcs for this update: a proper balance pass at the story mode while fixing its remaining problems, and the much requested job management tools.
Enjoy!
[h2]Story Mode[/h2]
The main change in this story-line is that there's a soft cap to the maximum amount of people you can control. This includes expeditions and workers at production center. The cap increases in each act. It's 25 people in the first act, 50 in act 2, 75 in act 3 and 150 in act 4. This is unique to story mode, the other scenarios and sandbox modes are still uncapped, obviously.
The rational for this change is pretty simple, it's to make this mode more difficult for veterans (limiting their ability to grind the whole world-map before moving to the next chapter) without complicating things for newcomers.
Additionally, you'll start the first act with an additional soldier-type settler, pushing your initial population to 8 survivors and giving you more than enough firepower to deal with literally anything the game can throw at you in the first few in-game weeks.
There are many more tweaks and fixes to the story stuff. Most will only apply when you switch to the next act (that's kind of a structural issue with the quest system) or start again.
[h2]Job Priority Menu[/h2]
As shown in the previous devlog, I reworked the job priority menu to include the list of currently queued jobs. There's not much to add, the menu is self explanatory enough.
[h2]Job Manager[/h2]
Here's the new job manager. It should be a lot more useful than its previous iteration. It's also much easier to read. I might still modify the UI further, because it's nowhere near as compact as I'd like it to be, but that will have to do for now.
So, you can select which jobs you want it to handle, while before it was kind of a all-or-nothing affair.
You can also tell it to make some of the entries "exclusive". Meaning that the people selected for a particular skill will only have this skill enabled. This is basically for the "Science" field. Enable it, set it to keep only the one best survivor, and check it to be exclusive. This way, your scientist will do science, and science only.
If you check the "Maintain Settings Automatically" checkbox, settings will be automatically reapplied each time you get a new survivor, or one dies, leaves, come back from an expedition, and so on. Basically, it does what it says on the box :)
But what if you want to set manual job settings on one (or multiple) of your survivors? Well you can do that too now!
See that check box at the bottom of the survivor's job menu? This is its purpose. Check it, and the job manager will completely ignore this survivor.
I can't stress this enough, though. There's no magic combination of jobs settings that will beat a base designed with proper depot and factory placement. Nine times out of ten, outside of farmers, scientists and medics, you'll just make things worse.
[h2]Notable Stuff[/h2]
I decreased the trade value of things like poison and tree seeds, as those were practically free money printing machines. I also halved the silk/poison production rate of tamed spiders/scorpions.
I also added a new booze with limited anti-sickness properties (I know, I know). It has a decent trade value, and can be made for relatively cheap with alcohol and poison (why not).
There's a lot more in the following changelog, which I encourage regulars to look at.
[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Artificial Intelligence[/h3]
- Survivors usually look for a nearby job before looking at the global list, now they'll only pick the nearby job if there's nothing else tagged as more urgent in the list. This should fix issues where you set a whole building to be razed, but a doctor is urgently needed elsewhere. They should pickup the urgent job instead of queuing more nearby demolition ones. At least that's the idea and it's assume you use global job priorities.
- In Story Mode, each Act has a maximal amount of population you can manage (25, 50, 75, and 150, respectively)
- In Act 1 of story mode, heavily reduced the total quantity of loot which can be found in military bases and police stations
- In Act 1 of story mode, removed special underground biomes from the world map
- In Story mode's first 2 acts (and outside of Act 1's ending), back-to-back events will no longer occur
- Added a second soldier type survivor to act 1's start to put it on par with a standard game start
- Halved production speed of poison and web from spiders and scorpions (from once every 12h to once a day)
- Slightly decreased reproduction rate of tamed giant spiders
- Heavily reduced buying/selling price of poison and tree sprouts
- Some of the least used/rare food (cooked meal, MRE) provide slight anti-sickness benefits on consumption
- Added "plot armor" to mutant horde's HQ in act 2 to prevent players from skipping the whole mission
- Added "plot armor" to most friendly factions' HQ in story mode to prevent players from getting soft-locked
- Increased rarity of spec ops armor, military armor, and some advanced rifles (both damaged and working variants)
- Added an alcoholic beverage which can be made from alcohol and poison, decent trade value, some health benefits
- Job Manager overhaul, easier to use, more functionalities and can detect people leaving/joining/dying to reapply your settings on its own when set to auto.
- Fog/cloud texture size increased. It's also "stuck" to the map instead of using parallax scrolling as it was visually annoying when zoomed out.
- Game will look for installed mods before starting a Story Mode game and warn you
- Study Zones can be "paused" so you can tell students/teachers to go do something else without having to clear the list
- Fully reworked Job Manager menu and functions. You can also set individuals to be ignored by said Job Manager by using a check box in their individual job sub-menu
- Redesigned Job Priority menu with additional job queue information
- Added total population counter to your faction's summary which includes expeditions and people working at the production centers
- Added tooltips to Settle Info Menu (when selecting a location for your base) to explain the various terms like decay, water access, danger and so on
- You no longer have to press the surrender button when defeated during a manual expedition battle
- Scenarios can set a maximum quantity of survivors the player is allowed to manage
- Ratio of special underground biomes can be altered (see act 1 map)
- Ability for a consumable to have a need modifier that the AI will not detect but still function. Like a food which slightly lessen sickness but you don't want to be used JUST to reduce sickness because it'd imply using way too many units. (see drink_devil, meal_mre, and meal_cooked)
- Farm could spam plant-seed jobs uncontrollably (regression bug from 1.0.0.4's AI improvement)
- Clicking on a log entry about a map battle you've left would try to teleport your camera to a target who doesn't exist anymore (often leading to a crash)
- Multiple event related issues in story mode (won't fix itself in whatever act you're in)
- People currently in an expedition wouldn't be included when relocating your base
- In sandbox mode, moving the base somewhere else could duplicate survivors if you customized your starting list
- Selection from the Population menu was unreliable (the menu can no longer be dragged around as it was partially the reason why)
- Issue where a stair could be blocked by a 2x2 (or larger) furniture during map generation
- The previous fix to the minor "copy/paste recipe" bug wasn't taking single item factories (like water collectors) into account
- Act 4 would normally finish when a specific item you've just produced is put into a container, it'll now be finished as soon as it's produced to avoid confusion.
- Hordes would not spawn any loot when defeated in automated combat
- Some issues with loot distribution when defeating grown hordes (then which have been on the map for a long time)
- Defensive battles would not use the proper gear for your workers