Patch Notes


Build 0.12.493 - City council update

July 18, 2023

The City Council update adds a few new mechanics, some of which are random in nature to increase replayability and add some more interest to the game. It's been longer than usual since update #11, that's mainly because I released a new update and free DLC to Suncrash's 5-year-old debut title - Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation.


City Council

Once your population is high enough, your people will start electing a city council. Every time an election takes place, you, as overseer, will get the chance to select a Head of Council from within the councilmen that were elected by your people. In terms of gameplay, this means that whenever elections take place you will be able to choose one out of several randomly generated options to head your council, and every option has different bonuses and penalties.

These bonuses and penalties will often have a significant impact on our choices, economy and military, so choose wisely. The bonuses, however, only last until the next elections, so even if you regret your choice it's not forever.

Political Factions

Three political factions were added to the game. Your interaction with these factions is through the council elections. When you select a head of council, your options will include members of different factions, and your choice will influence your relationships with these factions.

If your relationship with a faction becomes high enough, or low enough, you will start enjoying (or suffering) bonuses/penalties specific to that faction. This adds another variable, that will have a longer-lasting impact, to your choice of councilmen.

Traps & Mines

You can now defend your city by building traps & mines! Once you unlock the relevant research, there are three types of traps - high damage / low area of effect, low damage / higher area of effect, and a slowing trap.

Mixing up traps with your regular defenses can make a big difference. You can place them inside or outside your city (within your construction area), and they only activate when enemies are nearby, neither Tiny nor your resource carts take any damage from these traps.

For me, balancing these traps can be a tricky thing because they don't have any upkeep costs. You can theoretically fill the whole map with traps which will turn the defense game to something too easy. Finding the correct sweet point of price to build them vs their impact may take some tweaking, so please do let me know if you have any feedback.

New Tribe - Plague Hunters

A new tribe option was added when starting a new game. The Plague Hunters are an ancient military organization, from when civilization was at it's peak, and the dream plagues just started appearing in the world. Today, they live a lowly nomadic life just like the other tribes, except that they maintain the old traditions of hunting and exploiting the Dream Plagues.

This tribe excels at fighting with Tiny, they get more drops from enemies they kill, and they have some unique crafting recipes to generate resources from Drep remains. Their industry, however, is somewhat lacking.

Status effects on enemies

I've implemented the ability to apply status effects (such as slow, reduced damage, etc) on enemy units. These open up some interesting possibilities for the future. At the moment, this is only being used by the slow trap, but more content around this like consumables and abilities are in the works.

Those of you who enjoy playing around with mods can already use this new system to create interesting new content.

Landing Sequence

I've added a new landing sequence animation that will take place after you make your daring escape and choose a new safe zone to land in. No more teleporting directly to the ground.

New Content

While this is not primarily a content update, I did add some new equipment (a sniper weapon, advanced version of the snipe bow), and some new alternative recipes such as producing Acidstone without actually needing access to acid shards.

Saves from previous builds

Saves from the previous version are supported and should work without any issues. If your population is high enough, you can expect to see an elections as soon as you load your game.

Full Change List

Build 477 to 493

Added
  • Added elections to city council, starting from a population of 60, you will have to select one of three random councilmen to serve as head of council, every 50 cycles more or less. Each councilmen has different bonuses and penalties that take effect until the next elections.
  • Added political factions. You can get bonuses or penalties depending on your influence level with the different factions. Increase influence by selecting their representatives as head of council.
  • Added traps that you can research and build, that will trigger when enemies step on them and damage nearby enemies. Some traps have higher damage, others have higher radius, and a slow trap will slow nearby enemies for a while allowing your turrets to take care of them.
  • Added mechanics to apply status effects on enemies (such as the slow trap). Modders can add additional effects and more will be added in future updates.
  • Added a landing sequence when arriving at a new region.
  • Added a new tribe - Plague Hunters
  • Added a snipe gun - a stronger version of the snipe bow.
  • Added more recipes that use Refined Tar and Sticky Tar, that can be unlocked through ruins and expeditions.
Changed
  • New effect that changes movement speed by percent (previously there was only a fixed value). Used by slow traps.
  • Bonuses that apply to tiny now show [Tiny] before them when relevant.
  • Resource Packer now chooses the resource with the highest amount whenever it's time to send a cart, instead of sending the same resource over and over. This fixed a situation in which some resources would never get sent because other resources kept coming in.
  • Sound effects are now determined by the position of the camera when in free camera mode, instead of using Tiny's position.
  • Ambiance effects also use the camera's position instead of Tiny when in free camera mode to determine whether the city ambiance or wilderness ambiance is played.
  • Tweaked the map generation algorithm to spawn a little more resources and POIs in the area closer to the city and a bit less at the most remote areas.
  • Can now completely disable the take-off and landing animations.
  • Added the option to define buildings that don't give any refund when destroyed. This is only used for traps at the moment.
  • Added a warning sound and notification if Tiny is attacked while in free camera mode.
  • Changed text when selecting an item to send from the city from "Select Items" to "Select Item" because some players were confused by this thinking there was a way to select multiple items.
  • Tweaked some upgrades and recipes to use Flaming Copper, making the resource more useful. More will be added in future content updates.
Fixed
  • Fixed a bug where the city core was never destroyed even if it dropped to 0 health, making it impossible to see the game over screen.
  • Fixed the take-off animation in which parts of the city would appear to remain on the ground.
  • Fixed a bug where the difficulty setting that affects enemy numbers did not affect the amount of enemies in the map, instead it only affected the amount of raiding enemies.
  • The selected building info will now update when removing a module from that building, without having to re-open it.
  • Fixed a bug where raiding enemies always moved slowly instead of using their own speed once they break formation and attack.
  • Fixed an issue where the secondary weapon effects (specifically AOE damage) were being applied when the primary weapon set was selected, and vice versa.
  • Fixed an issue with the tip panel overlapping the pause menu window.
  • An unused item (Atlas Bolts) was removed from the options for tracking resources in the top-left.
  • Fixed a bug where the setting that determines whether or not citizens are shown in the city would not apply after quitting / reloading.
  • Fixed a bug searching the dream archives where sometimes relevant results were not shown.

Build 0.11.478 - Quality of life update

January 22, 2023

Major update #11 - the focus of this update is "quality of life", features and content that make the game more enjoyable to play, while removing some frustrations. Several of the features were suggested by you, our players, and others that I felt necessary.


Improved tutorial

While not the most glamorous feature, it was one of the most time consuming. I think I spent over a month on this one alone. I saw that the previous tutorial was annoying for a lot of players, and the learning curve too steep. Many players abandoned the game before even finishing the tutorial, so I felt something needed to be done, even if the price was a bit steep.

The improved tutorials are no longer presented in pop-ups, instead they appear in the corner of the screen and you can read and follow them at your own pace. There's a short core tutorial explaining the basics of building, the economy, transportation, and exploration - and then additional explanations will appear whenever you unlock a new feature or encounter something that needs explaining.

I've also made improvements to the flow, highlighting buttons you need to use to achieve your current objective, showing objectives in the minimap when you need to find something, and in general made the tutorial more player firendly. I hope these changes will make the new player experience more enjoyable with a less steep learning curve.

Debris & rebuilding

A neat quality of life feature will now leave burning debris wherever the Dream Plagues destroy your buildings or fortifications. You will be able to see exactly which buildings were destroyed, and with a single click, you can rebuild them including all their upgrades, add-ons and any settings. Get your city back up and running in seconds - if you can afford it (you still have to pay full price, like building from scratch. It's still better to keep your buildings safe!)

Rifts (raid spawn points)

Rifts will now appear around the edges of the map, and these will serve as spawn points when the Dream Plagues raid your city. Enemies will no longer just pop on top of you or your buildings, and you will be able to plan your defenses in advance, once you explore the map some and find these rifts.

Every map will have 5-8 rifts in different edges of the map, so you'll still have to keep your city well defended from all directions. You won't be able to build near the rifts (except for harvesters and rails).

Resource Packer

This new building can be used to receive resources via rails and send them to faraway resource drop-offs using terrain transporter carts that don't need to connect via rails. It works the same way that harvesters send resources to drop-offs, except this building can send any resource and not just raw materials.

You can use these to build production outposts outside the city, or to send resources from one side of the city to the other. Like harvester carts, these can only travel outside the main city platform.

Improved resource distribution in map generation

After some tedious research and several attempts, I managed to find a way to better distribute the different resources around the map.

It will minimize the chances of finding all of your acid shards in one corner of the map, that also happens to be by murphy's law the last area of the map you explore. Whatever direction you decide to explore first, you are now more likely to quickly find whatever resource you are looking for.

Better loot in higher difficulty maps

Up until now the loot from ruins and ancient debris were the same no matter the map difficulty. Now, when you land in higher difficulty maps, you are more likely to find higher tier resources and larger quantities of lower tier resources.

Graphic settings

The settings window is now divided to tabs, and by popular demand, I've added several new graphic settings that you can use to adjust the visuals to your liking, as well as a few other new settings to customize your experience. You can also use these to improve performance by sacrificing some visuals, if needed.

Scrapping equipment

You can now scrap equipment that you don't need such as obsolete weapons and armor, in exchange for some resources.

Full Change List

Build 362 to 396

Added
  • When enemies destroy a building or fortification, it now leaves a Debris behind, so you can see what was there.
  • You can rebuild destroyed buildings from their debris, with a single click, restoring all their settings including upgrades, add-ons, production recipe and input/output slots. There is no discount, the full price of rebuilding all the components must be paid.
  • You can now scrap unused equipment and get some resources.
  • Added a new Resource Packer building that is used to send any resource accross the terrain to a resource drop-off building.
  • Added a new brightness settings so you can control how dark or bright the game appears.
  • Added a setting to disable the weather effects (for performance benefits or visual preference).
  • Added visual quality settings (shadows, anti-aliasing, texture quality, etc) to help control performance vs visual quality.
  • Added a setting to disable or reduce the amoutn of citizens walking around the city, for those who prefer less crowded visuals.
  • Added a setting to keep the minimap static with north facing upwards (as opposed to the default in which it rotates when you rotate the camera).
  • Added a warning that appears when a rail segment ends without any input (ie when the rail segment leads nowhere). Also added a setting to disable this.
  • Added several new random map traits that affect expeditions - more expedition options, less expedition options, cheaper expeditions and faster expeditions.
  • Added a new map element called "Rift". Every new map spawns with several rifts around its edges where enemies can spawn in raids and you can't build next to them.
Changed
  • Map generation - resources are now better spread across the map to prevent situations in which all or most of any resource is located in one part of the map while others are empty.
  • Enemies are now very unlikely to attack harvesters, unless they actually block their way.
  • Expedition center and floating devices are now shown in the building management window.
  • Desert and lava maps can now have more resources nodes per cluster (4 instead of 3).
  • The repair tool now doubles as repair & rebuild. Attempting to repair a debris will rebuild it.
  • You can now drag & drop to repair or rebuild multiple buildings with the repair/rebuild tool.
  • Settings window is now separated to different tabs.
  • Moved the "Claim EA rewards" button from the settings window to the pause menu.
  • Added a "Help" button in the pause menu, which opens the journal with all completed tutorials. The F1 button will also open this.
  • Selecting items received by a resource drop-off no longer closes the window after every item you select.
  • The game will no longer auto-save when you quite the game if you just saved or loaded the game in the past several seconds.
  • Scrapping large ruins and destroying smaller ruins or debris now provides different loot depending on the map difficulty.
  • Increased the base amount of expeditions you can choose from in each map from 5 to 6.
  • Expedition options now include more lower-level expeditions, and by more than 1 level compared to the current map difficulty, to provide a larger variety of options with different cost-benefit ratios.
  • When you become overweight while the take-off engines are charging, you will now have a few seconds to fix the issue before the charging procedure has to start over. If you fix your weight during that time the charging will resume from where it was when you became overweight.
  • Replaced the old tutorial system with a new one that uses less pop-ups, and instead shows the tutorials on the top-right of the screen.
  • Overseer tools (pausing and free camera) are now enabled during the tutorial even if your difficulty settings have them disabled.
  • Tutorial objectives will now show your progress (for example, how many houses you've built out of how many are required by the current tutorial objective).
  • Tutorial messages with no objectives will now remain until you decide to dismiss them, so you can read them in your own time instead of having to read them as soon as they appear.
  • You can now skip specific tutorial missions without completing them if you so choose.
  • Changed texts, objectives, order, and a lot of flow in the tutorial in an attempt to make the new player experience smoother and the game easier to learn.
  • Added several new tutorials to explain mechanics that were not properly explained until now (such as building rail crossings).
  • Removed the whole milestone system. Some of the milestones were made into tutorial messages that appear when necessary and explain these features.
  • Tutorials that require you to build something or open a window will now highlight the relevant buttons in the HUD.
  • You can now have more than one tutorial message active at the same time. You can complete or dismiss the at your own pace.
  • Tutorial messages can now be minimized so they are less obtrusive, and you can open and complete/dismiss them later, when you choose to do so.
  • Reorganized the journal window to display the tutorials that you've already seen in a more user-friendly manner.
  • Windows that have a tutorial explaining how to use them when you first open them now have a "help" button near the "close" button that you can use to see that tutorial once again.
  • Tutorial missions that require you to find something (namely the Bloodwood resource node) will now highlight the location of these objects in the minimap.
  • Replaced and improved many of the tutorial videos and images.
  • When starting a game without tutorial, you will now be able to see all the main tutorial messages & any situational tutorials (those that show up when you encounter features for the first time) that you've encountered in previous playthroughs - in the help window.
  • Threat, world difficulty and raid timers are now paused during the tutorial until you reach the first city size milestone. This lets new players learn the basics without hurting their long-term prognosis even if they don't pause the game while reading the tutorial.
  • Enemy raids and mini raids will now appear in one of several rifts, instead of randomly appearing anywhere near the map edges. This allos for better planning of your defenses.
  • When you select items to craft at ruins or expedition loot, you will no longer be presented with options that unlock production/crafting recipes if you haven't yet unlocked a production/crafting recipe for raw materials that are required for the former. Instead, you will see the option to unlock the recipe for the required material. This only affects materials that can not be acquired elsewhere (namely, Refined Tar and Sticky Tar).
  • Map enemies in first map are weaker now, especially near the city.
  • Remnant Seekers stats tweaked - they get a 15% discount to expedition costs now, and their research speed penalty was lowered from -25% to -20%.
  • Modding: the effect on production when a resource node is depleted can now be defined per harvester instead of a single global setting.
Fixed
  • Fixed a map generation bug that caused the mapgen to fail and re-try, taking twice as long to create the map.
  • Fixed an exception that happened when a building that had warnings was destroyed by enemies.
  • Fixed a very rare bug that could break a save file if the game is saved at the exact same frame that a building is destroyed by more than one enemy hitting it at the exact same time. This actually happened to someone.
  • The "Paused" text no longer hides splash messages (such as research complete).
  • Fixed a rare bug that would sometimes cause the game to get stuck when generating a new map.
  • Fixed a bug where some bonuses like that from the recurring research would disappear when Tiny activated its emergency teleport.
  • Fixed a bug where the refresh destinations button in the destination selection window was disabled when you didn't have enough fuel for a re-roll, even if you had a free re-roll.
  • Fixed a bug that didn't let you start a new game after disabling a mod that added new tribes or difficulty settings, and that tribe or difficulty setting was your last selected option.
  • Fixed bug that caused harvester resources to be removed without sending any transporters when there were resource drops that accepted that resource, but there was no route from the harvester to any of these drops.
  • Fixed an issue when tutorials are active and the screen aspect ratio was lower and caused the HUD elements to hide each other.
  • Fixed an error that would occur after attempting to start a new game, seeing the warning message about the overseer tools, choosing to cancel - and then you couldn't start a game until you quit and started over.
  • Fixed a bug in the preview of the possible build positions that wouldn't update the preview when you moved the mouse when near the edges of the map.

Build 0.10.446 - Fortifications update

September 21, 2022

Major update #10 - the Fortifications update is now live. This update focuses on city defenses and raiding enemies. It is now more important than ever to defend your city well, because the raiding enemies are smarter, and also smaller groups of dream plagues may attack your city without warning. To deal with these threats, I've also added new tools at your disposal (such as stone walls and turrets), and made existing tools more effective.

The goal of these changes is not to make the game harder. I want you to think more about your defenses, and plan smarter. Some of these changes can be disabled from the new game difficulty settings, and I've also created a couple of mods that cancel others, for those who prefer to play the game as it was before.

This update also introduces a lot of performance improvements, especially late-game. These improvements touched the very foundations of the game code, and introduced parallel computing, so despite rigorous testing, some new bugs may have slipped through. Please let us know if you find any bugs or issues so I can fix them ASAP.


New tribe: Terra Multa

The Terra Multa tribe (known as 'Terrans' for short) are a hard working people who can make the most out of what the environment provides. They excel at harvesting resources and are able to extract more before depleting a node.

They have a cool ability that lets them find one additional resource node per map, and that resource can be of any kind within the difficulty tier limitations. That means you can find acid shards in the desert, or crystals in the Blightlands. You don't know this in advance, however, so it's less about planning and more about enjoying a positive surprise every once in a while.

Their main drawback is that they don't use materializers, so your cities are less self-sufficient at later stages.

Wandering Dream Plagues

One of the most meaningful gameplay changes in this update is what I call "mini-raids". Every once in a while, smaller groups of dream plagues (similar in composition to those you encounter when exploring the map, but weaker in numbers) will attack your city. These attacks happen without advance warning, and if unprepared, can do considerable damage.

These attacks are not meant to challenge your defenses. They are here so that you will have to defend your city and expansions at all times - rather than only defend them during raids. Simple walls and/or a tier-matching turret at exposed areas should be enough.

Note: raiders will no longer attack harvesters, unless they're directly in their way. So while you need to better protect your city buildings, you can still build harvesters out in the wilderness and in most cases they will survive.

Smarter raiders

One of the major complaints I've been hearing is that walls were too weak. I agreed, but up until now I couldn't change it - because raiders would target all walls before moving on, making them OP. Just building a bunch of walls in the middle of nowhere without even blocking the passage would be enough to keep the dream plagues occupied while Tiny or your turrets destroyed them all.

So now, the raiders are smarter. They will move around walls if possible, and once they break through, they will move through those holes rather than destroy all wall sections before proceeding. This has its limits, if enemies spawn from the north they are not likely to walk around your entire city and attack from the south just because it is less well-guarded, however a small detour that will save them the need to destroy a wall will be preferred.

So the raiders are smarter, but your walls are now stronger! I roughly doubled the strength of every wall, and added a new wall tier (see below). So you need to make sure your walls cover the entire pass, but it takes longer to breach a layer of walls than it did before.

Stone tier walls & turrets

A new middle tier of defensive structures has been added, including Stone Walls, a Stone Gate, and a Stone Turret. These are tier 2 buildings that require carbonite and featherstone to build, and they are roughly 50% stronger than wooden walls. The metal walls have been made even stronger (roughly 2.5x as strong as they used to be).

Stone turrets are somewhat similar to the wooden turrets, but they have increased firing rate and they don't have a penalty against armored enemies (see below).

Armored Enemies

Another mechanic is that some of the dream plagues are now considered to be "Armored". These are the larger variants of tier 2 enemies and higher. What does it mean that they are armored? Simple, some weapons deal less damage against armored enemies (such as wood turrets and light crossbows), while other weapons deal extra damage against armored enemies (such as Atlas turrets and heavy crossbows/guns). You will encounter these armored enemies mainly during raids of threat level 15 and above.

This new mechanic is meant to encourage you to build the more effective higher tier defenses, while balancing the previous OP strategy of just spamming hundreds of wooden turrets.

Bottom line - when moving to higher threat levels, make sure you have more than just wooden turrets protecting your city.

Explosive Launcher & Carbonite Sand

There's a new high-tier weapon, the explosive launcher. This is similar to the heavy crossbow but it is copper-tier (like the Rapid Gun & Spread Gun). This weapon is especially effective against armored raiders.

Carbonite sand is a new resource that is produced from carbonite. It is cheaper than carbonite (a single carbonite can produce 5 carbonite sand), and is used to construct the new stone-tier defenses.

Siege Beetle

The siege beetle is a large dream plague that appears during raids later in the game. It is armored, has ranged attacks that deal high damage but at a slow attack rate. It is especially strong when attacking buildings and defensive structures, with an added damage against these.

Performance Optimizations

I spent a large portion of the time allocated for this update on infrastructure and performance optimizations. I collected save files from several players on the discord server, and used these huge cities to investigate performance bottlenecks. I managed to improve performance in extreme situations by x3 and even more, and hopefully all these fixes will eliminate performance problems that make the game unplayable. We will keep improving it even further in future updates, and If you do encounter situations in which performance is really bad and you can't play the game, please grab a save file and send it to me as explained in this post.

Some of the improvements required that I touch some of the core infrastructure of the game, and I added more parallelization (multiple threads that can use multiple CPU cores at the same time). While effective, these changes are risky and could create what we programmers call "race conditions", which are bugs that don't happen all the time, and as such are much harder to find during testing and to fix.

I'd like to think that the decades of programming experience that I have, the deep familiarity with the game code, and the rigorous testing will prevent any bugs from slipping through, but that's wishful thinking so if you do encounter any new bugs, please let me know. Save files and logs (see link above) will be very helpful.

Full Change List

Build 362 to 396

Added
  • New playable tribe: Terra Multa, that excels in harvesting resources.
  • New weapon: explosive launcher. a higher tier equivalent of the heavy crossbow, dealing strong aoe damage with a slower attack rate.
  • New buildings: stone walls, gates and a stone cannon turret. These defensive buildings are tier 2, between the wooden defenses and the metal defenses.
  • Loading screen hints now show the number of the current hint you are reading and the total amount.
  • Added a couple of new loading screen hint.
  • Added mini-raids mechanic, where smaller groups of enemies spawn and attack your city without a raid warning. Make sure your city is protected from all directions. This can be disabled in the difficulty settings.
  • New reosurce: carbonite sand. Several stacks of carbonite sand are produced from a single carbonite resource, and they are used to build stone defenses as a cheaper resource than carbonite.
  • New enemy type: the siege beetle is a new tier 3 ranged enemy that is slow moving and has a low attack rate, but with very strong attacks that deal extra damage to player walls & gates.
  • Added new tutorials for mini-raids and armored enemies.
  • Added a welcome message that explains some of the balancing changes when loading a saved game from a previous build.
Changed
  • Enemy raid pathfinding no longer uses walls as targets that it actively seeks.
  • Enemy raid pathfinding now treats walls as areas that are harder to traverse, preferring to take routes where there are no walls or less walls when there is such an option without much of a detour.
  • Enemy raid pathfinding will now avoid areas that are very crowded with other enemies, so they will spread out a bit more when attacking a walled area.
  • Raiding enemies will no longer attack walls unless they block their path.
  • Raiding enemies will no longer target or attack harvesters unless they are directly in their path.
  • The game now remembers if you have primare or secondary weapon set equipped when switching maps or loading a game.
  • Larger enemies of tier 2 and higher, and some of the smaller tier 3 enemies are now considered as "armored" enemies. These enemies receive lower (or higher in some cases) damage from some weapons and turrets (see below).
  • Wooden turrets now deal 50% less damage to armored enemies.
  • Atlas turrets now deal 25% more damage to armored enemies.
  • Light crossbows now deal 50% less damage to armored enemies.
  • Heavy crossbows and the new heavy launcher now deal 25% more damage to armored enemies, and are now a bit more expensive than their light weapon counterparts.
  • Balancing - all types of walls and gates are now much stronger (almost 3x as strong as they used to be).
  • Balancing - atlas turrets have significantly increased damage and tarbomb turrets have slightly faster attack rate. They are also slightly more expensive to build and upgrade.
  • Title screen will now run at 60 FPS at most, even if your vsync settings are higher. This is to prevent very high GPU usage in the title screen.
  • When hovering the fuel area in the HUD, the tooltip will now show the maximum capacity.
  • The build info now has a small "i" icon, when hovering it you will see a tooltip with more information about the building, similar to the information in the dream archives.
  • Building health is now shown in the dream archives and build window tooltip.
  • Turret stats are now shown in the dream archives and build window tooltip.
  • Add-on and upgrade buttons are now grayed out if you don't have enough resources to build them.
  • Resources in tiny's inventory, storage building inventory, and the top-left resource tracker are now auto-sorted so their order remains constant even when adding/removing resources.
  • When trying to remove a building that was upgraded or has add-ons, a confirmation window will now show. This can be disabled in the game settings.
  • Pressing the enter key will now close tutorial windows, message windows, and will act as accept in confirmation windows.
  • Ruins with no remaining crafting/scrapping charges will now be marked as a depleted resource in the minimap.
  • The research HUD area now shows numerical values of how much the current research costs, how much was already performed, and the gain rate of research points.
  • Infrastructure upgrade that improves upgrade parts production speed now increases the output amount without increasing the cost in resources. This now essentially increases the production rate and also the efficiency of producing upgrade parts.
  • Survival infrastructure upgrades now increase wall health for every level.
  • You can now grab resources from buildings input slots.
  • Buildings output slots can now hold more resources when the building produces at a very high rate. For every 10 resources per second the output storage increases by 1.
  • When taking off, any modules that were installed in buildings that were left behind will be automatically removed and returned to Tiny's inventory.
  • The welcome message that shows when loading a game or starting a game without tutorial will now only show if you haven't played the game for three days or longer.
  • Tribe selection screen now colors positive and negative traits in green/red.
  • Balanced spread gun upgrading costs.
  • First raid in first map will now happen a bit later than before.
  • Lowered the weights of farm buildings, storage and resource drop to make them more viable for taking with you.
  • Starting at threat level 50 some raids will include only the largest types of enemies. This affects the composition of the enemies but not their total difficulty (so there will be less enemies but stronger types)
  • Starting at threat level 65 all raids will include only the largest types of enemies.
  • Performance optimization: the unit movement and steering system was re-written as multi-threaded, now utilizing more than one CPUs for better performance.
  • Performance optimization: re-written the map enemy AI (those who are spread around in the world, not the raiders) and made it much more efficient and also multi-threaded for a significant performance boost.
  • Performance optimization: significantly improved performance of player turret AI when there are lots of turrets and lots of raiding enemies. This is also multi-threaded now.
  • Performance optimization: raid enemies pathfinding is now calculated in a loop in a separate thread over and over again. The constant calculations were needed because pathfinding now takes crowding into account and this is something that changes all the time, so the pathfinding was moved to a separate thread in a way that it doesn't impact framerate, since it doesn't blockthe main game logic.
  • Performance optimization: significant performance improvements to the production and upkeep systems.
  • Performance optimization: building warnings such as insufficient resources or output full will now only show after one second in which the warning remained relevant. This prevents cases where the warning constantly blinks on/off when supply/demand is lower than the building's production capacity. This blinking on/off caused significant performance issues when you had a very large amount of buildings that kept blinking.
  • Performance optimization: fixed a performance issue when starting the take-off procedure and having lots of harvesters built in the map. This took as much as 20-30 seconds and now only takes the few seconds it needs to auto-save.
  • Performance optimization: When building, the available tiles display are now only shown about half a screen away from the mouse prosition, improving performance.
Fixed
  • Fixed an issue with the tier 3 melee enemies that caused them to deal half damage.
  • Fixed a bug that caused tiny to sometimes be hit by enemy attacks from behind walls when standing very close to those walls.
  • Added a module slot that was missing from the storage building.
  • Fixed icon for Glueberry Power production recipe.
  • Fixed a bug where a second scout post would not grant additional free rerolls.
  • Replaced wrong text in expedition info that showed expedition duration as "workers required".
  • Moving the expedition center will no longer reset its upkeep costs.
  • Fixed bug when flying away with secondary weapons equipped that would cause some of the secondary weapon bonuses to be applied on the primare weapon in the following map.
  • Fixed an issue where it showed 2 glow honey resources in the destination select but only spawned one.
  • Building under attack warning will no longer show when enemies are attacking gates (same behavior as walls).
  • Removed the fuel resource widget from ruin buildings.
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes enemies would move very slowly during raids even when they were being attacked by your turrets.
  • Fixed an issue with pressing ESC to close the in-game menu which caused it to close and immediately re-open in some situations.
  • Fixed a problem when using secondary weapon set, if one of the weapons didn't have anything in the secondary set, then switching the primary weapon would not update the secondary as intended.
  • Fixed issue where buildings that lost power sometimes still had their production rate counted in the resource tracking area.
  • Fixed an issue with the modding tools that broke the mod when you entered double quotes in the mod name or description.
  • Fixed issue with raiding enemies becoming stuck very rarely.
  • Fixed some typos and text errors.
  • Fixed an error that happened when demolishing a building at the exact time a projectile hit it.


Build 0.9.396 - Expeditions update

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.


New tribe: Remnant Seekers

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.

Expeditions

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.

Building Modules

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 & Glowwood

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

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.

Tarbomb Turret Blueprints

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.

Reset infrastructure upgrades

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.

Full Change List

Build 362 to 396

Added
  • Added a new Expedition Center building and research subject.
  • Can now use the expedition center to launch expeditions for various rewards including some unique. Every time you fly you'll get several random expedition options depending on the map level. Every expedition has different upfront costs, preparation costs & time, and workers required for the duration. The preparation costs & workers will be applied as upkeep for the expedition center which will change according to the selected expedition and its phase.
  • Added "reward crates" that you find in expeditions. Each crate offers a choice of 3 rewards, depending on the crate type and its level, and you can choose one of those 3.
  • A new system is in place for installing modules in buildings. These modules can be obtained via ruins and expeditions, and they provide bonuses for the buildings in which they are installed. Unlike building add-ons, these can be moved from building to building without problem, so they can be useful for buildings that are normally left behind. Just don't forget to grab them before you leave!
  • Added a new tribe that specializes in exploration and relic hunting through expeditions.
  • Added some new tutorials that explain new features. You will see these when you encounter these features for the first time even if your tutorials are disabled, but only once. You will see them again only if you later play with tutorials enabled again.
  • New HUD widget that shows expedition status when there is an active or completed expedition.
  • A new resource - Dream Core - is a rare old-world tech that can be found in expeditions. Several of these are now required to build the Nullifying Shiled and win the game, and it is also required to upgrade some buildings to their highest level, and to build some new unique items and craft highest level equipment. Choose how you spend these wisely.
  • Added a new blueprint that you can find for the Tarbomb Turret - once you buy this, you can build as many as you want, but they are expensive and require a dream core.
  • Added a new building - scout post - that lets you reroll your destination selection options for free. You need to find a blueprint before you can build these, and they cost a dream core each. You can build a maximum of two.
  • New item that you can find in expeditions or craft in ruins that will let you reset your infrastructure upgrades and re-distribute the points.
  • Added a new resource that you can produce - Glowwood, that is made of glow honey. This resources is used in some high level upgrades and crafting.
  • Added a new scouting module that you can install on Tiny to increase its vision range for faster exploration.
  • Added recipes for using the Materializer to produce Acid Shards and Crystals. These are rarer resources, and so before you can produce them you need to unlock the recipe, and also build a special add-on in each materializer and this add-on costs Dream Cores.
  • Added 20 new building module items, providing different bonuses for different types of buildings.
  • Added a level 2 cart-speed module so you can have both installed in the city core for a larger bonus. Tweaked down the first one a bit.
  • You can now choose to delete all your obsolete save files (those that can't be loaded in the current build) from the save/load menu.
Changed
  • You can now continue playing after winning the game if you choose to do so, both in Ironmand and normal mode. You won't be able to win again, however.
  • Made some items a "one-time" thing. That means if you craft/find these items, they will not be offered again. These are mainly items that you have no reason to own more than one, so that your options consist of other more relevant items. These affect both the new expeditions and the old ruins crafting stations.
  • When you click a resource node in management mode it will now open its interaction window even if you haven't unlocked the technology to build a harvester. This will give you info about the resource.
  • Added a setting to set whether the default camera in management mode is free camera or it follows Tiny. By default it will follow Tiny and you need to toggle free camera separately.
  • Added a setting that lets you auto-pause the game when switching to management mode. This is off by default. If you enable this it is recommended to also enable the default free camera, otherwise you won't be able to move around the map when the game is paused.
  • Made the Tarbomb Turret a bit stronger.
  • Changed some building upgrades to require Dream Cores for their highest level (including the City Core), and also made the bonuses from these upgrades higher.
  • Tiny's "City" modules are now treated as building modules that can be installed in the city core. Their bonuses remain the same.
  • Some building upgrades now also add a building module slot.
  • Increased production rate of Copper in the Materializer.
  • Extracting acid shards from Acidstone or Acidwood no longer generates Flux. Adjusted down its upkeep a little to compensate.
Fixed
  • Fixed bug - Acidwood>Acidstone and Acidstone>Acidwood conversion recipes were swapped.
  • Added missing translation for new save files.
  • Fixed bug where some fuel depots at tier 1 maps had nothing to offer in the crafting menu.
  • Fixed a bug in which clicking the resources or map trait icons in the destination select would not register as clicking the destination & selecting it.
  • Fixed some rare map generation issues that could cause the game to get stuck and require a restart & reload.
  • Fixed a bug with the filter in the "New" tab of the Dream Archives.
  • Fixed a bug where resources were not displayed in the "New" tab of the dream archives.
  • The "New" tab of the Dream Archives is now sorted alphabetically like the other tabs.
  • Opening a building window from the building management window will no longer unpause the game.
  • You can no longer initiate a new take-off sequence during the take-off animation.
  • Fixed a bug that increased your max population for a moment when moving a disabled house/apartment and then appeared as if people were dying because the max population fixed itself immediately after.
  • Fixed a bug in which an input connected to a rails crossing took items from both crossing directions and not only the one pointing towards the input.

Update 8 patches - Builds 352 - 361

  • Fixed an issue where costs and produced amounts of the "Acid Transformation" recipes were reversed and - converting Acidstone to Acidwood and then back to Acidstone would yield a net positive balance allowing for infinite crafting - which was obviously not intended.
  • Fixed an issue where harvester buildings didn't have any upkeep costs and did not actually use up any workers despite showing them in the building window. This will only affect newly built harvesters, those built before the patch will still have no upkeep/workers.
  • Reduced harvester building worker and upkeep costs.
  • Fixed an issue with the Beaver tribe that allowed buildings to overlap.
  • Tweaked output of acid extraction. These were not meant to produce more acid than was used to create the acidstone / acidwood in the first place. I decided to keep it higher, making this recipe a renewable source for acidshards (at the cost of featherstone/bloodwood), but I did lower their production rate a little.
  • Fixed issue when number of workers available for a specific building increased from partial availability to full availability (through population growth or disabling another building) - the actual production rate would not update.
  • Fixed an that caused the whole building's production to be disabled when switching production recipes if there were 0 workers free for that building.
  • Fixed a rare bug when the same building produced one normal and one global item that caused production of that building to get stuck. Specifically this happened in the acid extraction recipes.
  • Fixed a bug that didn't let you change production from the building info window if you opened that window from the building management window.
  • Building management window will now refresh worker assignments when enabling a building.


Build 0.8.352 - Economy update

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.


New tribe: The Beavers

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.

Assigning workers

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.

Production recipes determine upkeep

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.

Building management window

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.

Collectable production recipes

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.

More self-sustained cities

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.

Balancing and late-game progression

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.

Full Change List

Build 322 to 352

Added
  • Different production recipes now have different worker and upkeep costs.
  • Players can now lower the amount of workers assigned to any production building below the required amount which will free them up for other tasks and lower the building's production speed.
  • Players can now purchase blueprints for production recipes at industrial ruins, that improve efficiency and provide alternative methods of producing essential materials.
  • Added alternative production recipes for several construction materials and other essentials such as food, flux, power, upgrade parts and research.
  • Added new renewable resources that are used in alternative production methods for improved efficiency.
  • Added more advanced production recipes that are based on renewable materials alone, allowing for construction of more self-sufficient cities that can hit the ground running when flying to a new location.
  • Added new add-ons to most production buildings that are required for more advanced production recipes. These replace the requirements for upgrading the building level (which is now only used to improve efficiency).
  • Added a building management window that lets you see all your buildings, what they are producing, and the amount of workers. You can change productions, amount of workers, and turn the building on/off directly from this window.
  • Added some new crafting recipes that let you transform between different resources. These recipes need to be found at ruins.
  • Added some new items that provide permanent bonuses when purchased.
  • Added a new tribe - the Beavers - which specialize in building large cities.
  • New add-ons for storage building and batteries are now available to increase the storage capacity for flux, fuel and power.
  • New setting to auto-pause the game when the game window loses focus (when Alt-tabing to another window). This is on by default.
Changed
  • Upgrading buildings now improves their efficiency - they produce more per worker/flux/power that are used to upkeep. The increase in upkeep is smaller than the increase in productivity.
  • When you don't have enough workers, non-production buildings will receive their workers first (buildings such as storage facilities and resource drop-offs).
  • If there are not enough workers to fully populate a production building, that building may still work at lower productivity with the partial amount of workers that is available.
  • Increased amount of population provided by higher level houses and apartments.
  • Decreased amount of food consumed by houses and apartments. Also decreased the production rate of food plants.
  • Apartments now provide more workers overall, making them even more efficient compared to houses in terms of weight and building space per person.
  • More advanced productions and buildings now require more workers.
  • Advancing city levels late game now requires higher populations.
  • Increased flux and power costs for several late-game buildings and production recipes.
  • Higher tier research now costs more to encourage using more efficient research production recipes.
  • Information about production recipes now also shows their upkeep and worker requirements.
  • Some items are now used automatically after purchasing, when the timing of using these items is not meaningful (for example, those that provide free expansions, upgrade points, or free constructions).
  • Industrial ruins no longer offer regular items, only production/crafting recipes. The items previously offered by industrial ruins were distributed between the other ruin types.
  • There is now a higher chance of finding industrial ruins on each map.
  • All maps may now hold two types of ruins instead of one. Blue maps are more likely to have multiple ruins.
  • Items that provide bonuses that are not stackable will no longer be offered after purchasing them once, to avoid confusion and accidental purchase of a worthless item.
  • Maps may now have a maximum of 6 traits in total.
  • Balanced costs of expanding city area. The costs now increase much slower when you already have a large city.
  • The last two upgrades of the city core now provide more power and flux storage than before.
  • Removed the "Tar" addons for flux and power production buildings. These were replaced with the regular production line add-ons that are used to unlock production recipes in all buildings.
  • Resources stored in the resource drop-off building are now counted in the resource tracker and can be used for construction/crafting.
  • Tweaked amount and types of resources in higher tier maps, so that low-tier resources (wood and stone) appear less often and some more advanced resources appear more.
  • Tweaked and balanced several late-game resource production recipes.
  • Added badge on the infrastructure upgrades HUD button that appears when you have unused upgrade points and shows how many.
  • Can now switch between city info and building management windows through using tabs added to these windows.
  • Gates can now be built when the opening part of the gate is on top of rails (previously you had to place the gate first and then the rails).
  • When hovering buildings that have "range" parameters (tesla towers, turrets) - their range is now displayed (same as when building these).
  • Show building health when hovering building in management mode.
  • You can now left click on a rail segment with a resource output slot to modify the output (same as dragging an output on top of an existing one).
  • Vsync now enabled by default.
  • General performance improvements.
Fixed
  • Fixed a bug when switching between build categories with multiple pages to ones with one page that would cause them to appear empty.
  • Fixed a bug that could have the game stuck in paused mode when the city take-off animation should be playing.
  • Fixed an issue with the resource tracker that would not count the raw materials produced by harvesters when showing the resource balance.
  • Fixed a bug that didn't let you put resources into production input after changing the production recipe.
  • Fixed display issue where some citizen props appeared in incorrect places (the wrench for example was stuck in their head instead of their hand).
  • Fixed display bug where warnings on apartment buildings were cut off by the top of the object model.
  • Added missing translations for "Auto Save" and "Quick Save" for non-english languages.
  • Build rails shortcut now displayed correctly instead of showing the number "2".
  • Fixed an issue that would show "no research selected" splash warnings in cases where a research is complete but you do have another research queued.
  • In general warning splash messages will no longer appear if the warning has been fixed while the warning splash is waiting in the queue for other splash messages to finish showing.
  • Fixed an issue where damaged units & buildings did not show their health bar after loading a game.
  • Fixed bug where HUD buttons wouldn't update shortcut in some cases after re-assigning keys.
  • Fixed a bug in which an item that was crafted at ruins appeared far less than it should have.
  • Moved buildings are no longer counted as new buildings for tutorial/milestone purposes.
  • Fixed outdated description of Hard preset difficulty.
  • Fixed link to feedback form so it automatically fills in the build number.
  • Fixed link to patch notes that didn't work in some browsers.
  • Text and typo fixes.


Build 0.7.320 - The Overseer update

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.


Overseer tools - active pause

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.

Overseer tools - free camera

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.

Overseer tools - speedup

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.

New tribe - the Teslacrats

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.

Better automation - the sorter

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.

More open desert & ashfall maps

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.

Switching weapon sets

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.

Full Change List

Build 300 to 320

Added
  • Added free camera mode that lets you look around the map regardless of where Tiny is.
  • Added active pause that lets you pause the game and build or manage your city while the game is paused.
  • Added speedup button that will cause time to move faster (x3).
  • Added a Sorter building that lets you sort items from a single rail entrance into several rail routes depending on the item.
  • Camera position is now shown in minimap when free camera is toggled.
  • Added the Teslacrats tribe.
  • Added resource duplication crafting + research that is only avaialable to the Teslacrats.
  • Added a second weapon set and a button to quickly switch between them.
  • Added an additional ambient music set (those short musical scores that play while exploring, in between the longer scores).
Changed
  • Default keyboard shortcut for switching between management and combat mode is now TAB instead of SPACE - the latter is now used for pausing, which is more common in real-time-with-pause games.
  • Default keyboard shortcut for Dream Archives changed from TAB to H.
  • Default keyboard shortcut for repairing buildings changed from F to L - the latter is now used to toggle Free Camera.
  • You can now transfer items from buildings to Tiny only if Tiny is near the building (about one screen away max).
  • You can now click & drag to demolish several rails/buildings at once. There is a confirmation window when more than one building is being destroyed.
  • Tiny can now drop raw resources in resource drop-off buildings.
  • Depleted resources now have a red X near them in the minimap.
  • Gates can now be built on top of walls without having to first remove the walls.
  • Crafting window now shows the items that you can afford above those you can't.
  • Upgrade buttons in the upgrade layer will now appear as disabled when you can't afford the upgrade, so you can quickly determine which are available at any given moment.
  • Destination selection window now has a Dream Archives and Inventory buttons to help you determine which resources you own and which you need, so you can choose the most fitting destination.
  • When demolishing a storage building, Tiny will now grab all the resources that were inside it.
  • You can now enable VSync in the settings window.
  • Hold control / shift when crafting to craft 10 / 50 at once.
  • Harvester buildings can now be built from the construction menu (you can still build them by interacting with the resource as well).
  • Added a next page button in the construction menu when there are more options than fit in a single page.
  • Desert and Ashfall Range biomes are now more open with less blocked areas and more building area.
  • Pause in windows difficulty settings was replaced with Overseer Mode difficulty setting, that enables or disables the new overseer tools (active pause, speedup and free camera).
  • Added a key to jump the camera view to the City Core or Tiny intermittently.
  • Added a Dream Archives button in the in-game menu (ESC menu).
  • Currently equipped weapons are now shown in the HUD in combat mode.
  • In ironman mode, the save game file will no longer overwrite other ironman games when the city name is the same. This is especially important with non-ascii city names because we remove those from the save file name, so different city names ended up overwriting each other accidentally.
  • Right click & drag can now be used to move the camera in free camera mode. The current input mode (build / demolish / move / etc) will not exit if you drag the right mouse button.
  • Volume controls are now more sensitivy. The default volume remained the same, but increasing or decreasing now has double the effect.
  • Added a prompt to press F1 to repeat the tutorial for the current objective.
  • Added a prompt to press TAB to switch to management mode, that disappears after switching once.
  • Added a welcome message that is shown once per session (session = from the time you launch the game launches until you quit back to windows) when starting or loading a game (except when tutorial is active). This is meant to remind returning players of the most important controls.
  • Hard difficulty setting now has the overseer mode (previously 'pause in menus') enabled by default. Only the hardest preset difficulty disables the overseer tools now (of course you can disable them in custom difficulties as well).
  • There is now a warning when starting a new game with overseer tools disabled explaining the consequences of such choice.
  • When enabling/disabling buildings from their window, you will now see a tutorial explaining the on/off toolbar tool (will only show once).
  • Updated the roadmap images in-game.
Fixed
  • Fixed a bug that caused you to receive items instead of spending them in some rare cases.
  • Fixed Typos & text issues.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the resource tracking to have a line-break in it and overlap the resource below it.
  • Fixed an issue that caused transporter carts and enemies to jitter left/right in their movement.
  • Fixed a bug where Tiny would be stuck in an attack animation and move slowly when switching to management mode in the middle of an attack.
  • Fixed an issue that caused the available build indicators to remain on map after quitting the build mode in some situations.
  • Fixed a bug where pressing F1 did not repeat the tutorial for the current objective.
  • Fixed a bug with the localization modding tools that caused an incorrect file name to be used.
  • Fixed an issue in which the cursor icon would not switch back to normal when returning to the title screen.
  • Fixed a sneaky bug that would break the game when generating a new map in some very rare cases.
  • Fixed a small delay in the positioning of minimap icons when rotating the camera.
  • Fixed a bug where in some situations the resource tracker in the top-left showed "N/A" in the balance section.
  • Fixed an issue where resource harvesters sometimes sent resources to a resource drop-off that was not the closest one.
  • Fixed a bug in which the game remained paused in some situations despite closing the window that caused it to pause in the first place.
  • Fixed an issue in which the rotate camera keyboard button did not work in some situations.
  • Fixed an issue with take-off view not zooming out enough in some rare situations.


Build 0.6.300 - The Ashfall Range update

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.


New biome: The Ashfall Range

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.

Spreadbow, Spreadgun, and higher tier equipment

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.

Improved Dream Archives

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.

Modding Support

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

Tier 3 enemy creatures

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.

Balancing and quality of life improvements

Lots of balancing and quality of life improvements were made, most of them based on your feedback. Some of the more important ones:

  • Tiny can now move between buildings.
  • When raids split and attack using different paths, you will now see them all in the minimap.
  • We added fuel caches in some maps as another way to get fuel early on.
  • When buildings are attacked their position will now appear in the minimap.
  • Depleted resources now suffer a larger penalty, but resource nodes start with more resources.
Performance improvements

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.

Full Change List

Build 267 to 300

Added
  • Players can now create, download, and upload mods.
  • Steam workshop was enabled for mods.
  • Added a new biome - Ashfall Range, available at map difficulties 4 and above.
  • Added a new resource unique to the Ashfall Range - Liquid Fire, and two additional resources derrived from it.
  • Added additional production recipes for fuel and power based on liquid fire
  • Added alternative production recipes for creating carbonite and dream mixture so players have some more choice.
  • Added a materializer recipe for Cabtus production, which requires an add-on that uses liquid fire.
  • Added a new type of weapon that shoots three projectiles in a fan-like shape (a shotgun like weapon).
  • Added higher tier upgrades to the rapid gun and the new spreadgun so they are better suite for higher difficulties.
  • Added a new higher tier armor to improve late-game survival.
  • Added tier 3 enemies that will be used in higher difficulty maps and raids instead of using stronger versions of the tier 2 enemies like we did before.
  • Added 'Fuel Cache' map traits that can appear in some biomes and always contains fuel, which could help to avoid running out of fuel in early game. This trait appears in the destination selection like others.
  • The Dreamtouched Fields (blue) biome now has its own weather effect, as well as a new weather effect for the new Ashfall biome.
  • Added an additional strip mining technology (but slightly reduced the first one), so the total bonus to resources can reach 25%.
  • Dream Archives now has a Resources tab where you can see more detailed information about all researched resources, including how to produce them and what they are used in.
  • New music track for the Ashfall Range biome (also added to the soundtrack DLC).
Changed
  • Ironman difficulty setting is now off in preset difficulties except for "Hard" and "Dream Plague". This is due to understanding that the game can be long and it can be frustrating for most players when they lose due to a silly mistake and lose all their saves. Those who want a harder challenge can still enable it at any time.
  • Tiny can now move between most buildings.
  • The amount of resources per resource node are now higher, but when they deplete the penalty is more severe - production speed reduced to 35% from the previous 50% value.
  • When a building is attacked there is now an indicator in the minimap in addition to the warning message.
  • When an enemy raid is spread out or splits so that the raiding creatures are far away from each other, additional indicators will appear in the minimap so you can track the entire raid group and not just one part of it.
  • You can now prevent specific harvesters from sending carts to resource drop-offs by giving them rail outputs.
  • Players can now place raw materials in production buildings directly even if the input inventory of that building is full (a way to get rid of materials you picked up along the way).
  • When flying, resources that can't be taken with you will now also be removed from input slots of production buildings.
  • Significant improvements to Dream Archives lets you see for each building what production recipes are available in it, what upgrades and add-ons, for each resource where it is produced, what it is used in, and more.
  • Removed the Upgrades tab from the Dream Archives (you can now see each building's upgrades and add-ons directly in the building's page).
  • Added icons to Dream Archives subject list.
  • Added a filter to the Dream Archives.
  • Dream Archives are now sorted alphabetically.
  • Added some information to raw resource item descriptions regarding where they can be found.
  • Tarbomb turret now has its own explosion effect.
  • The maximum map difficulty is now 8. It was supposed to be so before, but players could manually select higher difficulties even though it didn't have any benefits. Now they can't.
  • Harvesters now send carts to drop-offs at slower rates, which significantly improves performance in large maps full of harvesters. This doesn't affect balancing because a harvester will send all the resources it has in a single cart.
  • Doubled the maximum storage of harvesters output slots so they don't fill up when carts take longer to send as described above.
  • Cabtus food recipe now uses raw cabtus instead of carbon mix, making it less expensive to produce, but it now requires a low amount of purptatoes as well.
  • Slightly lowered the penalties of the Dream Weavers tribe and increased their Flux bonus.
  • Added a tootlip when hovering the cycle counter that explains what a cycle is.
  • Repeating research now contribute to final score.
  • Tweaked the some of the scoring elements, namely reduced the score from research and increased that of city area expansions.
  • Tweaked the Surge ability so it takes much less time to charge and deals damage in a larger area around Tiny.
  • Added a tooltip to the depleted resource warning that appears on top of the harvester which shows the exact penalty of the depleted effect.
  • Renewable gathering infrastructure upgrades now improve materializer production speed as well.
  • Fixed and tweaked some texts to make them clearer.
  • Positive/negative modifier effects now appear red/green all around the game.
  • When "pause in menus" is enabled, the game will now pause when editing the HUD resource tracker.
  • You can now add several resources at once to the HUD resource tracker instead of having to add them one by one.
  • Tweaked appearance of some tooltips to show Building/Crafting costs in a more consistent manner.
  • Minimap trackers for active enemies in raid now appear smaller than the indicator that warns of where the raid will spawn at.
  • Tips are now displayed in the in-game menu (ESC menu) in addition to the loading screen.
  • Added a missing sound effect when scrapping ruins.
  • Crafting recipes from Drep remains now have their own icons.
  • Default key for rotating building changed to 'G' which is easier to use, and the other direction is no longer assigned by default. This helps solve problems with some keyboard layouts (like German), and really there are only 4 rotations so there was no need to rotate to both directions. Still, players can assign the other rotation key if they want.
  • Added a keyboard shortcut for removing entrances/exits (it's not bound to any key by default though).
  • Added a tip that explains that melee attacks hit multiple targets and are great for large groups of close-quarter enemies.
  • Made Atlas turrets and metal walls 10%-15% stronger.
  • Unprocessed resources can now be tracked in the HUD.
  • Reversed order of city weight display so it will show "weight / capacity" instead of "capacity / weight".
  • Uncommon resources (Acid Shards, Crystals, etc) now spawn a few more nodes.
  • Liquid Dream costs a bit more renewable materials, but Nightmare Plating requires one less Liquid Dream.
Fixed
  • Performance improvements to late game especially when there are lots of harvesters and resource drop-offs.
  • Significant improvement to tile screen performance so that it no longer causes the graphics card to work too hard.
  • Improved performance by removing redundant models from the map edges (that were always hidden by fog of war anyway).
  • Fixed a bug that prevented carts from recalculating their route when building/removing buildings that should block them.
  • Fixed a bug in which when a single harvester didn't have a route to the resource drop off, it could prevent other harvesters from sending their resources as well.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some UI elements in the building window (such as the enable/disable button) to disappear on some screen resolutions.
  • Fixed a bug in which expanding the city to include new buildings that were already there did not add their weight until they were moved.
  • Fixed a bug that caused long-range power transmitters to appear "outside of power range" after disabling and then re-enabling them.
  • Fixed bug that could cause cart movement to break when changing which resources a resource drop-off receives.
  • Fixed a bug in which the Smoker item and Tiny's death did not increase/reduce threat level as it should.
  • Fixed a very rare bug in which production would cease in a building if it had to consume two resources of the same type in the same frame (only happened at very high consumption rates such as materializer, and on low framerates).
  • Fixed muzzle flash issue for rapid gun.
  • Removed duplicate choices of the same resolution in the resolution selection drop-down.
  • Fixed issue with player projectiles passing through enemies without hitting them in lower frame-rates.
  • Fixed a small display issue in the purple biome minimap for blocking terrain.
  • Fixed issue where changing a selected subject in the Dream Archives would keep the scrolled position instead of scrolling back to the top of the new subject.
  • The hints that show when building now shows the actual assigned key for rotating a building instead of the default value.

For older updates see this page.