June 22, 2022
Major update #9 - the Expeditions update is now available. In this update we added a new Expedition Center building, where you can assemble and send expeditions to nearby areas of interest in search for valuable resources and technology. This update also adds new content, a new tribe, and a building upgrade module feature that allows you to better customize your economy.
Here are some of the larger changes in this update, and the full list of changes can be found below that.
The remnant seekers are a tribe of explorers. They excel at moving around and finding interesting locations for high-quality salvage. They believe that within the past they will find the secrets to saving the future.
Their cities can fly more often for less fuel, and they start with an expedition center, which also has more options than other tribes and is more efficient. Their defenses are a bit weaker, and they are a bit slower in research, but the technology they can find by exploring ruins can more than make up for it.
A new expedition center building will let you send expeditions in search of resources and high-quality loot. Each map will have a different set of expedition targets that you can choose from, each with its own resource requirements, preparation and exploration times, and possible rewards.
Expeditions offer some unique loot such as building modules (see below), equipment for Tiny, and technology blueprints. You may also find research data that will allow you to advance your own research, as well as upgrade parts and old-world tech scraps.
Your buildings now have slots for inserting upgrade modules. These modules provide different bonuses to different buildings, such as lower fuel costs for floatation devices, lower resources usage for refineries, and higher yield for harvesters. Some buildings will have to be upgraded for unlocking module slots, and some have multiple slots so you can customize them.
Building modules replace the old "City Modules" that were installed on Tiny, which can now be installed in the city core, which supports multiple modules after upgrading. Tiny still has its own modules that enhance the steambot itself.
Dream cores are a new rare resource that can only be found in expeditions and rarely at ruins. These powerful old-world artifacts are the key to reaching the highest upgrade levels for some buildings, building the nullifier shield to win the game, and for some special buildings and equipment.
Glowwood is a new resource that requires the rare Glow Honey to produce, which is usually sought for producing fuel. Glowwood is now used for some of the more advanced upgrades and crafting recipes.
Scout posts are a new type of building that helps you explore faraway lands. As such, it improves your ability to choose your next destination when flying away (through free re-rolls of the destination options).
Scout posts are unlocked by finding their blueprints in tech ruins or expeditions, and require Dream Cores to build.
The tarbomb turret is a defensive building in high demand due to its long range and area damage. Previously you had to find them in ruins, but each kit only let you build one. Now, you can also find blueprints that let you build as many as you like, but they are expensive to build, and require Dream Cores which are hard to come by.
There's now a new rare item that lets you reset all your infrastructure upgrades and re-assign them. This can be very useful when your focus or play style changes throughout the game. Find this item in expeditions and ruins.
Build 362 to 396
March 24, 2022
Major update #8 - the Economy update is now available to all players. The focus of this update is the city's economy in the middle and late stages of the game. This update adds new ways of controlling your economy, a lot of balancing, and some new content, as well as a new tribe and other bug-fixes and quality of life changes.
Here are some of the larger changes in this update, and the full list of changes can be found below that.
Note: due to significant content and balancing changes, saves from previous versions are not supported. If you prefer to continue your previous game, you can still play the older version by selecting one of the previous alpha builds from the betas tab on Steam.
The Beaver tribe is a new playable tribe that focuses on building large cities. These guys are all about building stuff on the flying platform, upgrading, and reducing wasted resources when leaving buildings behind.
They start with larger cities and pay less for expanding them further, but they are unwilling to build most buildings outside. You'll need to better manage your limited space and weight, but you will enjoy cities that can hit the ground running and require less re-building after flying to a new area.
In the economy update, you now have better control over the amount of workers assigned to different buildings and production lines. Previously, you either had the full amount of workers required to keep the building working, or the building was disabled. Now, you can assign less than the full amount, and the building will still be able to function, though at a lower level of productivity.
This new system not only lets you prioritize which buildings and production lines are more important, but also allows fine tuning the rate at which you produce and consume different resources and better balance your economy.
The amount of workers, flux and power that is required to keep a building functioning now depends on the selected production recipe. The same wood warper that only requires a couple of workers to produce the bloodwood planks will now need many more for producing acidwood.
This new system allows for better balancing of these basic resources, making late-game economies more interesting and finely tuned.
To better control large, late-game cities, especially now that every building has their own worker count and upkeep, we've added a new building management window.
In this window you can see all production buildings (and other buildings that require upkeep), and you can quickly change production recipes, assign workers, and turn the buildings on/off.
We've added several new production recipes that you need to collect before you can use them. These recipes can not be researched, and the only way to unlock them is by exploring Industrial ruins.
These recipes, for the most part, provide alternative ways to produce the same resources either to increase efficiency or to allow more flexibility based on the resources you have available. These recipes can make a big difference in producing sufficient resources, research and upgrade parts for late-game progress.
Several production recipes were added or modified so that they require only renewable resources. These allow creating production lines that can keep working after flying without having to find new resource deposits and reducing dependency on specific biomes.
For the most part these resources are less efficient (in terms of how many workers/power/flux you need to spend per resource produced) than those that require non-renewable resources, but they are far more dependable and are invaluable to keep frequent-flying cities running smoothly.
We've increased the costs of much of the late-game content such as research and upgrades, making the more advanced production recipes and upgraded buildings a meaningful alternative to just building hundreds of basic buildings.
We've also increased the production rates of these resources in mid/late game recipes, and the higher levels of houses & apartments now provide more living space.
Additionally, upgrading production buildings now improves their efficiency (amount of resources produced per worker/flux/power), and they are no longer required for producing advanced recipes, making them nice-to-have rather than must-have, but at the same time making them more valuable to have. Instead, you will have to build separate add-ons that do not increase the building's upkeep, in order to allow that building to produce more advanced recipes.
There are lots of changes to the economy balance of pretty much everything - upkeep, production recipes, building costs, expansion costs, upgrade costs, research, etc. For the most part late-game elements were made more expensive, and also more productive, but there are some exceptions. Namely it is now easier to expand your city late-game, making it more feasible to build huge cities.
Build 322 to 352
December 21, 2021
The Overseer update focuses on one of the most requested changes since launch - pausing the game and giving you time to think, plan and re-organize.
Here are some of the larger changes in this update, and the full list of changes can be found below that.
Note: Saves from previous builds are supported, but there may be some balancing or other unexpected issues. You can still play the older version by selecting one of the previous alpha builds from the betas tab on Steam.
One of the things we wanted to touch in this update was the constant, non-stop feeling of urgency. There was not much time to stop and think, and even when you did, there was often a feeling that you are wasting time and should be doing stuff. Re-organizing your base felt like an inefficient waste of time.
We've brainstormed and researched many options to tackle this. One of them was a "stealth mode" in which your city would stop producing, but you could spend time building and re-organizing without having the threat level increase. Another was to have time-off and manage your city while flying from one destination to another. All these and more ended up feeling like they would add more complexity to an already complicated game, and so I decided to go with a more straight-forward and well known solution - Active Pause. The active pause lets you play the game as usual while the game is paused, so time will not advance, but you can still build, craft, change production recipes, move buildings, and so on.
It didn't make sense to let Tiny move while the rest of time was frozen, so we had to let you move around and manage the city without moving Tiny by introducing the free camera toggle.
When enabled, the free camera will disconnect the view from Tiny, and you can move the view around the map as you build, manage or destroy stuff. A few other changes had to be made when taking this new mode into account - for example, you can now only transfer items to/from buildings if Tiny is near them, whereas before if you could open the building's window you could transfer items.
Other than supporting the active-pause feature, this new tool changes some of the flow of the game. You no longer have to abandon your exploration and move Tiny back to the city every time you want to build a new house. You can now do so remotely, as a real overseer would.
With the addition of active pause and free camera, a lot of the actions that previously "wasted" time can now happen in an instant, while the game is frozen or without having to walk back and forth. And so, the amount of time that would pass within the game is now a little shorter, when doing the same actions.
For that reason, we wanted to add an option to speed-up time when waiting for stuff to happen, such as waiting for research to be complete, or for resources being harvested. So, there's now a speed-up button that will cause time to pass faster.
You can now unlock The Teslacrats tribe and then select them when starting a new game. These energy freaks have a unique technology that they can research, which allows them to duplicate resources using the power of Tesla. Their ability makes it easier to get some resources, but it's not unlimited. Every time you duplicate resources, the machines become less efficient, and subsequent duplications will cost more energy - unless you give them time to cool down and recharge.
Teslacrats also produce power at a higher rate than others, but being the elitists of the energy producing community, "cheap" power generation methods (those that require no resources) are beneath them, and they do so very inefficiently.
The sorter is a new building that can be placed on rails that has one input slot and 3 output slots. You can then configure which items would be sent to each one of the output slots, allowing you to sort items out of a rail route into separate routes depending on the item.
This allows for more automation and combining several routes for long transportation and then splitting them back up. As with many other features, we thank our early access players for suggesting this.
We tried to make the different biome maps a bit more unique and not just visually. Desert and Ashfall (lava) biomes are now more open, with less crowded mazes and more building area.
Different weapons may be beneficial for different situations. We've added the ability to set up two sets of weapons for Tiny, and switch between them with a press of a button.
Build 300 to 320
September 29, 2021
The Ashfall Range update brings a new biome, with new resources, equipment, production recipes, enemies, and other content. It also brings modding support, lots of quality of life improvements, balancing tweaks, performance improvements and bug fixes.
Here are some of the larger changes in this update, and the full list of changes can be found below that.
Note: Saves from previous builds are supported, but there may be some balancing or other unexpected issues. You can still play the older version by selecting one of the previous alpha builds from the betas tab on Steam.
The new Ashfall Range biome is a fiery biome full of ash, fire and molten rock. This is a late game biome that appears in 4-skull difficulty or higher, and it contains a new resource unique to this biome called Liquid Fire.
This new resource comes with new production recipes, some of which create brand new construction materials, and others are alternative recipes for existing construction materials - adding more valid options and freedom when choosing your next landing destination.
To better survive in the higher difficulty maps, we added new higher levels of equipment, including weapons and armor.
We also added a new type of weapon that shoots several projectiles in an arc, useful against stronger enemies that are nearby if you can hit them with the entire burst, and also against weaker enemies that are spread out.
We improved our in-game encyclopedia so it provides more information that is easier to access. You can now see resources in these archives, and for each resources you can see how to get it, and the different uses it has. More resources and uses will be displayed as you unlock them with research.
We also fleshed out the other pages, and improved navigation by adding a filter and sorting the subjects alphabetically.
We now officially support modding for Dream Engines and we opened the Steam Workshop for uploading and downloading of mods.
The current level of modding support lets you change configuration files that determine the game's content, balancing, and many systems. You can also upload custom sprites that can be used for example for adding resources or equipment. All language files are moddable too so you can add community-based translations for the game.
Support for additional modding functionality will be added later down the road if there is demand for it. We'll make a more detailed post about our modding support on Steam in the next few days. For more information, see our Modding Guide
When you reached 5 skulls or high threat levels, you may have noticed that we used larger & stronger versions of the tier-2 enemies. In this update we added new tier-3 enemies, which will improve the balance and overall feel of the late game.
Lots of balancing and quality of life improvements were made, most of them based on your feedback. Some of the more important ones:
We've identified and improved some performance bottlenecks, especially in the late game when the map is full of carts travelling to resource drop-offs.
We know we still have more optimizations to do, and will keep improving in future updates. If you encounter a situation where the game's performance is bad, please follow the instructions in this post and send us the save file, it will really help if we can identify those poor performance situations so we can improve and optimize them.
Build 267 to 300
For older updates see this page.