Content drop 2: The Expedition Update is a free content update for Aven Colony now available on Steam / PC and coming to console very soon.
We've made a new video available to explain the new features; please check it out here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMM_iOPJiho
Here's a more detailed breakdown of all the new features.
For those of you playing on console, rest assured that content drop 1 is coming to console this month followed by content drop 2 not long after that! See the video above for more information.
The Overworld Map
First, we’ve made huge changes to the expedition interface. The expedition UI is now a first-class game mode. And that means that you can now:
- change the game speed inside the expedition interface;
- view your food and water and other indicators at the bottom while in this mode;
- use in-game UI elements like notifications, mission objectives, and the colony control panel.
We’ve also renamed this to “the overworld map” since it’s now MUCH more tightly integrated into the game. Other major changes include:
- You can also now see threats like creep spores and plague spores approaching your colony on the overworld map before they actually arrive
- You can also now issue commands to your ships simply by right-clicking
- Redesigned and improved a lot of the expedition UI, such as redesigning and enlarging the panel that appears when you click on a point of interest
- Expedition POIs will gradually respawn over time once you clear enough of them, allowing you to attain up to 99 commendations
- You can now build remote installations on the overworld map -- these are described below
- You can now click and drag the vessel list to move it out of the way
Revised Camera System
We also overhauled the camera system to allow you to smoothly zoom in or out. If you’re in the normal game view, you can use the mouse wheel or a key shortcut to zoom out to a new top-down view we’re calling “Satellite Camera Mode.” And from there, you can zoom out again to go straight to the overworld map.
You can also zoom right in to the surveillance camera. Just zoom in the mouse wheel and it will go right in to the nearest surveillance camera.
So there are 4 levels of the camera system, and you can switch smoothly back and forthn between all of them with the mouse wheel or key shortcuts.
Remote Installations
We’re also now supporting a feature to let you actually extend your civilization out beyond the borders of your colony and build remote installations on the overworld map.
There are 4 different kinds of installations:
- Settlements are essentially like micro-colonies outside your main colony, and over time, you can set up custom trade contracts with them. This is a great way to get more food and minerals late in the game, and we’ll discuss custom trade contracts a bit later in the video.
- Missile Launchers defend your colony from threats approaching on the overworld map, which gives you a way of destroying creep spores and plague spores and other threats before they even reach you.
- Solar Arrays collect huge amounts of solar power and beam it back to your colony. You can collect that power with a special Transceiver building discussed below.
- Deep Core Mines continuously collect minerals from deep underground and give them to the nearest Remote Settlement so you can acquire them with trade.
All of these installations work a little differently from buildings inside your colony. Not only do they cost nanites, but they take some food, water out of your inventory as well, and some of your colonists are also going to be removed from your colony to help provide staff for these remote installations.
Each remote Settlement can support up to 2 other installations of any type nearby. Each Remote Settlement also requires 1 Colony Terminal in your colony to support it. You can build a maximum of 5 Settlements total.
You can cancel construction of an installation before it's been built, but you cannot remove it once it has been constructed. By default, installations will be named automatically ("Remote Settlement Alpha"), but you can simply click on the name in the panel to change an installation's name.
Ark Launcher
In order to create these installations, you need to build the new Ark Launcher building. Just like a Trade Hub or an Immigration Center, you build an Ark Launcher and it comes with its own ship.
Once you have an Ark, you can send it out onto the overworld map to build remote installations.
Note that Ark ships can explore the map (revealing the fog-of-war) and build installations, but they cannot visit POI locations. Only Expedition Vessels can visit POIs and earn commendations.
Colony Terminal
In order to support your remote installations, you’ll need to build a new residential building called the Colony Terminal. The Colony Terminal is an animating structure inspired by the “Dynamic Tower” currently under construction in Dubai. It’s divided into segments that can rotate individually to give the inhabitants a better view of the colony around them.
The Colony Terminal has several purposes.
Not only is it a residential building, it also has a hovercar station built into the top of the tower. It can exchange hovercars with any other Hovercar Stations or Colony Terminals nearby. Each Remote Settlement you build outside your colony needs to be supported by one Colony Terminal inside your colony. Once this happens, you’ll occasionally see hovercars arriving from outside the map or flying over the hills toward the remote settlements you’ve built as the colonists travel back and forth.
Transceiver
Next is the Transceiver. The Transceiver is a levitating mirror system that collects the solar energy from your remote solar arrays outside the colony. It provides a huge amount of power that can really help your colony keep going in the endgame.
Tier-2 Expedition Center
We’ve also added a new tier 2 version of the Expedition Center. This upgrades your expedition ship to a much tougher vessel with a higher expedition rating. In order to build this expedition center, you first need to earn 10 commendations from doing expeditions. It can also act as a remote sentry on the overworld map, firing missiles at any approaching threats.
Custom Trade Contracts
We also have added support for custom trade contracts with Remote Settlements. If you’ve built a settlement outside your colony, you can now trade with it and pick the specific resources you want to import or export.
Cultist Airships
Aven Colony is also getting a new enemy type with this content drop. The Valley of Death mission in the campaign involves cultists following the Cult of the Seterdari, and we thought it was time to bring those out of the expedition system and have them attack your colony in person. Now, in the last 2 missions of the single-player campaign, you can be attacked by cultists in their airship.
Depending on your sandbox map settings, you can also experience cultist airship attacks in sandbox games.
Revised Water
We’ve also completely overhauled the water system in Aven Colony. All of the lakes and rivers and oceans in the game now use a brand new system that gives us much better-looking water.
Revised Building Shutdown
The building shutdown mechanic has also been overhauled!
Previously, buildings had to be in a power zone with a power shortage in order to be shut down. Now, we’ve changed building shutdown to be based on energy batteries.
Most buildings can be shut down at any time, but while they’re shut down, they’ll drain 50% of their normal power consumption from Energy Batteries. This makes it possible to shut down buildings at any time, while also increasing the utility of Energy Batteries.
Building Limit
We’ve also added a new building limit to the game.
Now, before you start worrying, I want to promise that you can override this in the game options, so you can still build a colony as big as you want.
But we were finding that some players with low-end hardware were building colonies much bigger than they needed to and that their graphics hardware couldn’t support at a decent frame rate. So, we’re doing this to encourage players to build colonies that are a more reasonable size and make sure players with low-end hardware understand the trade-offs involved.
The current limit is:
- 300 buildings base (not including tunnels) -- this is roughly the size of a colony that can cover every single available tile in the Vanaar map
- +40 buildings per remote settlement your colony supports (i.e., max of 500 with 5 possible settlements)
Note that this will NOT affect console once this content drop reaches console, as it is already limited to 300 buildings.
New Threat Markers
All threats in the game now are highlighted by an animated red diamond. This makes them MUCH more visible when there's a lot going on, or when you're looking at the colony from above in the new Satellite Camera Mode.
Threat markers will be shown for the following threat types:
- creep spores
- plague spores
- plague spore microbes inside tunnels
- attacking hover guardians
- toxic gas eruptions
- sandworms
- water worms
- the new cultist airships
Additional Features and Tuning Changes
- New game options: "Disable building limits", "Disable mouse wheel camera transitions" and "Disabling building ghosting during placement"
- Megastructures now cost roughly 10% more Nanites to construct and take longer to build
- Added new POI type for expeditions: "Unidentified Aquatic Life Form"
- Slightly increased the chance of multiple creep spores, plague spores, cultist ships, or attacking guardians for large colonies
- Added a "Build 2 Settlements" or "Build 3 Settlements" objective to nearly all missions, including sandbox; in most cases these replace old late-game objectives to get 16 or 18 commendations (note that saved games in these maps will still have the old objectives and they will still work)
- Removed the final Sandy Gulch objective to collect sandworm meat and replaced it with 3 new objectives: build a Colony Terminal; build an Ark Launcher; build a Remote Settlement
- In-game SHIPE calls can now play on the overworld map; they no longer pause while the overworld map is active
- Mouse buttons 4 and 5 have now been remapped to "surveillance camera" and "satellite camera"; note that you will need to reset your key bindings in the options menu to get this change
- "Rotate building left/right during placement" have been remapped to the '[' and ']' keys; note that you will need to reset your key bindings in the options menu to get this change
- Updated Holo-Sim 1 to include instructions on using expedition mode and satellite camera mode
- The "Overworld Map" button on the main menu will now show a red diamond next to it indicating the number of currently approaching threats
- You can now switch between camera modes just by clicking on the title at the top-center of the UI
- The PgUp/PgDn keys now zoom in/out smoothly and continuously
- Azara Falls now asks you to build Space Elevator instead of a Stadium at the end
- Expedition Centers can now be recycled! Note that the ship must be docked in order to recycle the Expedition Center.
- 25% of hovercars now have fins in the back
Features Removed
- Removed the middle tier of Energy Batteries. The old tier-3 is now called "Tier 2" and tier-2 does not exist. All Energy Batteries in saved games higher than tier-2 will now be "Tier 2," with the capabilities of what was previously called "tier 3." This is a free upgrade for old tier-2 batteries -- you're welcome! :)
- The old "Zorium Bombs" research topic has been removed, as have the mission objectives to research them. Zorium Bombs are obsolete now that the tier-2 Expedition Center has been added. Games saved with the old mission objectives to research Zorium Bombs will still have the mission objective but will instantly complete once the objective is activated.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug with trees / foliage visually "thrashing" when pausing or unpausing
- Mission objectives that require you to keep a building for X amount of time now take into account how much time they've been functional before the mission objective was granted; this is especially helpful for the Vanaar speed run achievement, which is extremely difficult otherwise. You can now build an Earth History Center sooner and get credit for the final "One More Sol" mission objective for all the time that it's been around.
- Fixed issues with saved camera positions (Ctrl-6 through Ctrl-0) not being recalled properly (keys 6 through 0) if they were too close to the edge of the map
- You can no longer have a save game file name with just whitespace
- Expedition centers loaded from old saved games now are properly recyclable
- Solar Panels no longer play the "servo" sound in winter, when they don't move
- Immigration Centers should now always properly redistribute immigrants if there's enough room
- Residents of buildings being destroyed should now always properly redistribute if there's enough room
- Fixed shard storm impact effect sounds not playing on campaign Kelori Strand or Cerulean Vale
- Fixed bug that caused colonists not to be added properly for extremely large colonies
- Fixed bug with some vertical sol lines not rendering properly in the Stats panel
- Crewmembers in expedition ships no longer try to emigrate
- Fixed a bug where creep could sometimes spread too fast
- Fixed bug with building implosion sounds not attenuating properly
- Fixed a rock with no collision in Vanaar
- Fixes to some very rare stability issues
- Lots of other little bug fixes
- The README has now been localized into French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, German, and Chinese
Performance Optimizations
- Optimized drone rendering
- Optimized game logic for Service buildings
- Optimized Hovercar Garage performance
- Optimized worker reassignment among buildings
Please note that if absolutely necessary, you can revert to the previous version of Aven Colony on Steam using the beta password contentDrop1 to revert to the content_drop_1 branch. However, do let us know if you run into any bugs or issues that make this necessary, and note that any saved games saved with the current version will not be available with this older branch.
EDIT: On December 6, we released a small hotfix (1.0.23705); update notes are here
Thank you for your support and for being part of a terrific community.
We hope you enjoy all the new content, and we are very excited for all that's yet to come. We hope you are too!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/484900/Aven_Colony/
Paul Tozour and the Mothership Entertainment team
