After the Collapse News

While I'm working on 0.6.8, here's a new small patch fixing several issues reported by you guys. It's a simple patch, fully compatible with previous savegames.

It's also adding a new feature: The ability to grow seeds instead of plants in your farms.



Simply put, you now have the ability to either grow your plants as normal (and get one seed in return, assuming the plant do not die). Or, you can harvest for seeds, in that case, you'll get multiple seeds per successfully grown plants, but no food ingredients.

With this option, you can grow/control your seed reserves without relying on inherently random expeditions and traders. Even a small 2x2 seed production farm will ensure you'll get a healthy supply of new seeds.

• Balance: Slightly reduced the break chance of the highest tier weapons and armors
  
• Content: You can now setup a farm as a seed production center (each fully grown plant will give several seeds but no food)
  
• Engine: Zones/Rooms can have tech requirements now (unused in base game for now, can be modded in, though)
  
• UI: Added game log text when cattle dies of old age
  
• Fixed: People with traits damaging max health (sick, hunger,...) would lose a small amount of health each time you save and load a savegame
  
• Fixed: Several uncommon issues with traders (generally about not exiting map when they should)
  
• Fixed: Settlers dying of natural causes will no longer break their weapons or armor (only in combat)
  
• Fixed: Breaking loot crates (caverns/sewers) had a chance to break weapons and armors inside (if any)
  
• Fixed: People dying during expeditions would clutter memory and savegames (not significantly, but a bug's a bug)
  
• Fixed: A potential overflow in extremely long games (100 hours or so) which could lead to a variety of small issues
  
• Fixed: The "expiration date" of temporary/morphing traits might reset after loading a save
  

With 0.6.5 (and hot-patches) released , it's time to have a look at what's planned for the next major update. As usual with those articles, it's subject to change during the development, but it will still give you a fairly accurate idea.


The first and foremost feature we're going to tackle is the ability for factions (you included) to control resource production centers on the world map. Before your ask, no, this update will not allow you to directly control your settlers while doing so. It might come later. Production centers will be put on the map, the same way we already do with expeditions. However, they will generally be guarded and in a state of disrepair.

The process to take over one will roughly work like expeditions with a few exceptions. Firstly, you send a few survivors to clear up the location from hostiles. If they succeed, the location is now yours, if they do not, you'll have to try again with a stronger group. Assuming the location is secured, you'll then have to send a crew down there to repair and maintain it. The number of people you need to send and the repair costs will vary from a location to another. People you've sent to maintain the building will live there until you decide to abandon the place.

Once everything is in place, you'll receive resources daily.

On top of the maintenance crew, you'll be allowed to send guards and buy additional defenses with money in order to bolster the defense rating which will determine how well the place is going to fare against enemy attacks. Again, while on paper it might be possible to let the player deal with those attacks manually, we're not there yet.


Of course, you won't be the only faction to do this. AI controlled factions will also slowly take over production centers. At some point, clashes are bound to happen over the control of specific high value locations. They might try to bribe you or take them by force depending on the situation and the faction itself, all of which will have an impact on your relation with each faction. Bandits might try to wreck the place if you don't pay a tribute.

It also means that your reputation with other factions will have more of an impact as it will unlock the ability to settle peace treaties with them.


Of course, if resource productions centers were only giving out the old resources which are generally plentiful, it wouldn't be that interesting. This is why I'll be adding a few new mid-late game resources (namely steel, robotic parts, and a few others) which will be needed to build new late game content. The general idea, at least when it comes to weaponry and defenses is to have 3 distinct tiers, each for a specific activity / stage of the game.

The pipe-weapon stage, which is great for early game and can generally be built and maintained using readily available and plentiful resources from the map. The tech tree for those has been improved in 0.6.5 and I might add specific low tier turrets in this update.

Pre-war weaponry, basically modern weapons and armors you cannot build yourself but which you can repair / recover through trading and exploration. They are relatively rare (at least the best ones) but they are great at pacifying bandits and monsters. Here again this has already been implemented. However, with the addition of resource production centers, I might expand on that a bit. Also, turrets might start to require bullets for them to function properly.

Finally, we'll be introducing high-tier weaponry, with the the associated tech tree and resources which you can only access fully with the control of specific factories: experimental weapons, and drones/robots.


With the proper (late game) tech and resources you'll be able to build this new "crafting station". It will allow you to build and customize your own robots both for defense and work purpose. The station's menu will ask you to select a body, a head and arms, each coming with different stats, weapons, and job abilities at different costs and tech requirements. Assuming all requirements are met, the construction begins and a few hours/days later a new robot will be ready to serve your colony.

For all intent and purpose, robots will act and count as settlers. They obviously wont need to drink or eat, but they'll occasionally need to recharge on specific "pads" which consume electricity. Their weaponry and jobs will be set in stones, you won't be able to alter those after construction.


Of course, this article only focuses on the major new features. I'll continue to add content, improve the user interface, add sound effects and fix bugs. I will also be merging the combat UI into the standard UI so infestation clearing becomes less of a hassle in the early game (or even dealing with small attacks).


I don't have an exact ETA for this release, but if everything works out okay, it should be delivered just before December (probably with nightly builds made available earlier for those willing to test the new features as they come). Meanwhile, I'd also like to fix a few problems that have been reported to me in the recent days, as such you'll likely get another small patch for 0.6.5.

More articles will also follow when I can show the robot building facility in action :)

Here's the third and hopefully last hot-patch for the Anniversary Update.

While it's labelled as a hot-patch, a lot of work has been put into the settlers' ability to detect what they can access and what they can't (and by extension what jobs they should take). They should no longer "bug out" if you have blocked the path to their bed or other important places.

Note that this is an extensive internal change and large parts of the previous detection mechanism have been rewritten from scratch. While I've been spending most of the week testing it, it's possible that very few edge cases slipped under the radar. If any, I'll be happy to fix them as they crop up.

Beside that, depression no longer flat out prevents people from working, they'll just be much less efficient instead. That should help new players having less of a terrible time on their first few tries. In the same spirit, doctors will generally heal people fully and passive regen while sleeping is more reliable (read better).

And of course, properly reported bugs have all been fixed :)

Expect a devlog this weekend. It will address the next proper update's content.

• AI: Settlers are much better at understanding what they can access and what they can't
  
• AI: If possible, doctors will try to heal people to full HP before letting them go (instead of 75%)
  
• Balance: Depression no longer flat out prevents people from working, they'll be much less efficient instead
  
• Balance: Slightly improved healing rate while sleeping (settlers still won't naturally heal if they are wounded or have a sickness like the flu)
  
• Balance: Capped max mood penalty for lack of beds to -25%
  
• Content: The animal traders now sell appropriate seeds and wheat to go with the animals
  
• Engine: Adding/removing walls or otherwise (un)blocking parts of the map has a much smaller impact on performances, especially on larger maps
  
• Fixed: The effect of traits on settlers' needs wouldn't scale with game speed
  
• Fixed: Cattle was responding to calls for help (swarming bandits with pigs is no longer a viable tactic, we'll get to proper guard animals later)
  
• Fixed: Recent regression bug causing dead people to come back to life, brain dead.
  
• Fixed: Ambush critters (those in buildings) wouldn't run their idle animation cycle after loading a savegame (only really visible if fog of war is disabled)
  
• Fixed: In combat mode, clicking on the button to switch between below and above-ground would deselect your settlers
  
• Fixed: Traders have less items than they should
  
• Fixed: Several very minor issues
  

Here's our second patch for the large 0.6.5 update.

It's making acid rains a bit less frequent, they also appear later (12th day instead of 8th). This leaves more time to stock up on food and get things rolling before farms become less reliable.

I also added much needed feedback (in the bottom right log) to combats. You'll get informed when someone score a critical hit, a survivor is near death, when an enemy dies, and so on.

Finally i fixed a few minor bugs and 2 very situational crashes.

Expect a few more small patches before I start working on the next proper update. We'll get to what will happen in the next devlog :)

Edit: Also our Reddit AMA is happening here, feel free to join :)

• Balance: Acid rains appear later (12 days grace period instead of 8) and will be slightly less frequent
  
• Balance: Increased carry capacity of stone (250->300) and metal storage (500->750)
  
• Engine: Underground "critter invasions" are much less likely to spawn in very small boxed in zones.
  
• Graphics: Slightly better Flamethrower "bullets"
  
• UI: Holding shift while mouse scrolling over the 'quantity' field in recipe and trade menus will increase/decrease the value by 5 increments (instead of 1)
  
• UI: Updated descriptions of a few items
  
• UI: More feedback during fights (critical hits, enemy deaths, survivors getting near death... shown in log)
  
• Fixed: Switching to the world map while the Job Priority panel is open would cause a crash
  
• Fixed: A very rare case where a container's inventory would go into the negative, causing havok with the rest of the AI
  
• Fixed: The game will no longer crash on Windows KN and N limited editions, it will run without sound and a menu will show up explaining how to fix it.
  
• Fixed: Bullet damage would occasionally be applied twice
  

Hi!

My apologies for the short notice, but if you want to ask someone who's crazy enough to make a game in the same category as RimWorld anything, well, I'd be happy to answer your questions on reddit :)

It doesn't have to be on the game itself, questions about steam and development in general are welcome too!

In any case it will happen on r/Steam at 1PM PT (pacific time), which is around 4PM US Eastern, 9PM in the UK, and 10PM in western Europe - click here to view the time we will be live in your local timezone.

This post will be updated with the proper URL when it becomes available. It will be on the r/Steam subreddit.

Edit: our Reddit AMA is happening here, feel free to join :)