Sorry everyone for such a big gap between updates. Part of the reason has been a big struggle with getting the upgraded liquid simulation system working nicely. Turns out trying to simulate water pressure at a large scale is tough. There has also been a major overhaul of the world generation system to use Unity's new jobs/bust system, generating new worlds should be a lot faster. This also allows the preview for maps should be a lot better and include fresh water spawns.
Oil and Steam
Oil should now spawn correctly on the map, oil can also be harvested and processed from some animals. Oil can be used to produce steam which can then be used for power. Refined oil is also required as an ingredient for the end game buildings. The salt worker job has been changed to cover all liquid processing jobs.
Water Pressure
More work is required here, but water now has pressure and should flow as expected. A new water wheel building allows for power from water flowing from higher elevations. Combined with the water pump this should allow power storage.
This still needs to be balanced properly, but power will be a lot more important for the mid/end game.
Pipes/Mechanisms
Improvements to the UI for placing pipes and mechanisms. Mechanisms now animated when active. Power system has been changed to allow buildings to keep a buffer of power. Power producing buildings will now only produce power if it is needed, and power for most buildings is only used when the building is active.
Terrain generation and difficulty Settings
I feel like one of the biggest problems with Embark now is the lack of balance as new systems have been added. It is hard to test since I have no time to play the game myself enough. There are now a lot of difficulty and terrain generation options to allow for customizing most aspects of pacing easily. Some options which were not working correctly before have been fixed. The hope is that the official difficulty can be tweaked based on settings players prefer. I look forward to your feedback!
Research time and item crafting difficulty has been reduced significantly for the easier difficulties.
More Combat AI Improvements
Further improvements to combat AI. Squads should be more responsive now, but I am still planning for a more major overhaul next update.
Terrain Rendering
The terrain rendering code has been overhauled to use the Burst jobs system too, maps should load a lot faster and moving the camera around the map should be faster.