Patch notes 2022-07-06 (Experimental)

Hello!

Big thanks to everyone who shared their opinion about golems in Update 2! Today, we’re making several changes to address your feedback. We also have the second batch of the new content, this time related to the needs system. But before you order an overheated beaver…

Developer’s Minilog: Negative effects

It’s a good moment for a follow-up to our developer’s log. Let us explain why we’ve decided to torment your already miserable-at-times beavers with more negative effects.

• It’s a tool to counterbalance overpowered mechanics, both existing ones and those that we will introduce in the future. Before, we had to shelve many cool ideas that, without any way to nerf them, could ruin the game’s difficulty curve.
• Keeping your beavers starved or dehydrated used to be a good strategy to reduce food and water consumption - and you could fix an excessive hunger with a few carrots. It did not have any bad consequences, except perhaps on the player’s conscience.
• Similarly, extended lack of sleep or shelter now meaningfully affects beavers’ behaviour. With overheating in place, droughts become a deeper threat that’s harder to ignore.
• The ability to add negative effects allows us to expand existing features when it makes sense, for example by adding stinging bees to Beehives, broken teeth for lumberjacks, and work injuries of varying likelihood and severity in workplaces.
• At the same time, we have another area where we can add more raw, lore-friendly content - such as teeth grinders, dandelions, medical beds, and healer huts.

We hope you'll like what we're adding today. Please let us know what you think!

Patch notes 2022-07-06

Temporary statuses and where to find them

You have already seen certain temporary statuses thanks to the addition of golems. Now, we’re expanding this system to cover the post-apocalyptic fate of regular beavers, too.

• New status: Overheated. After spending too much time in the heat of drought, beavers suffer from a heatstroke (read: -10% working speed and -10% walking speed).
• New status: Wet fur. For some time after leaving the water, beavers gain a 5% increased walking speed as well as immunity to Overheating.
• New status: Bee sting. Bees from Beehives will now sometimes sting nearby beavers which results in the beaver feeling unhappy, thanks to its swollen face.
• New status: Broken teeth. Lumberjacks will now occasionally break teeth, reducing their effectiveness. The more trees they cut, the more likely it is to happen.
• Every few hours, all beavers working in factories have a chance of receiving an Injury (a temporary status that had already been inflicted by exploding golems). Injuries decrease walking speed by 50% and cause the beaver to refuse to work until healed. The chance of receiving and the duration of a received injury differ between workplaces.

Temporary statuses - countermeasures

Alright, alright, we don’t want your beavers to just suffer!

• New building: Shower (Folktails-only, 1 slot). Thanks to its long pipe submerged in water, this thing makes your beavers wet even if they’re working well above the water surface. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
• New building: Water Jet (Iron Teeth-only, 1 slot). Installed directly in water, this compact attraction ensures your beavers stay in water for a longer period of time.
• New building: Teeth Grindstone (1 slot). Beavers visit this to sharpen their broken teeth while hoomans squirm at a thought of how this torture device works.
• New building: Medical Bed (1 slot). Injured beavers go here to be healed. And if you have an access to Medicine, it is super effective!
• New building: Healer (1 worker). A good doctor working here produces and distributes Medicine to beavers resting on Medical Beds.
• New resource: Dandelion. Found in the wild or grown by Foresters, and cut by Gatherers. Used as the primary Medicine ingredient.

Needs system rework - cont’d

Food and Water (previously: Thirst and Hunger) were updated in the initial Update 2 release, now Sleep and Shelter get a similar treatment.

• Sleep and Shelter can now also reach negative values.
• Sleep-deprived beavers fall unconscious when the bar reaches its minimum value. (It works the same as it used to, but it’s now consistent with other “bidirectional” needs).
• Shelter no longer provides any stat boost when fulfilled.
• With Shelter below 0, beavers suffer from -20% Life Expectancy. Base life expectancy has been increased, so if Shelter is above 0, the average lifespan remains the same.
• Beaver needs that had a boring “no effect” tooltip have received short descriptions.
• Needs are no longer equal in the wellbeing scores - harder-to-fulfil needs give more wellbeing.
• Wellbeing score required to unlock the Iron Teeth has been adjusted but still requires a similar amount of progress.
• Need bars now have a small area that’s always displayed to better communicate that the need has a non-zero value.

Control Tower

Yeah, the first Control Tower turned out pretty bland. We’re giving it an ability to add a specific AoE boost instead of being a simple SP sink and a “do Cogheads in this area suck” check.

• Control Towers now allow you to pick a specific work speed boost (to Construction, Cooking, Woodworking, Metalworking, Assembly, Farming, and Forestry). The boost applies to all Cogheads operating in range (on top of the Tower’s regular bonus).
• Activating that secondary boost costs between 1 and 2 extra SP per hour, depending on the boost.

Balance

Everybody loves playing with numbers!

• Workplaces now only consume energy while actually operating.
• Engine will no longer consume logs while there’s a zero need for energy in the connected power grid.
• Disposal Facility’s capacity is now 5 times larger.
• Broken golems will no longer leave the Disposal Facility or the Maintenance Station when these buildings become unoperational.
• Changed Barrelbots’ lifespan to 70 days.
• Broken golems now wander for 2 days instead of 1, which should lower the rate of spontaneous explosions.
• Golem wreckage now disappears faster.
• Lowered base Control Tower cost from 2 to 1 Science Points per hour.
• Adjusted Inventor and Observatory output numbers slightly to get rid of decimals.
• Engine now uses 0.2 logs per hour, down from 1, and its internal storage has been lowered to 10 logs. (Translation: the full storage now sustains the engine for 2 days, up from 1).
• Increased the weight of Scrap Metal from 9 to 11.
• Increased the weight of Golem Chassis from 10 to 11.

Iron Teeth science production changes

Costs related to the Numbercruncher were too high so we’re tweaking them… but we’re taking it one step further. To further differentiate the factions, we’ve removed the Observatory from the Iron Teeth building pool and pushed the more-effective and worker-less Numbercruncher to be available at a similar stage.

• Observatory can no longer be built by Iron Teeth.
• Numbercruncher now uses 500 HP, down from 1000,
• Numbercruncher’s SP unlock costs is now 1500, down from 10000.
• Numbercruncher’s building cost has been reduced to 30 planks, 100 gears, and 25 metal blocks.
• Numbercruncher’s SP output has been lowered from 12 to 10 per hour.

Model changes

When creating the new buildings, we missed our chance to add more stackability to the game. We’re making some fixes today, and we’ll be more mindful of that in the future. Also, you can now better see how the wasteland life treats your beavers.

• Golem Part Factory (both factions) received a new, stackable model.
• Golem Factory models (both factions) have been updated to allow easier clustering and shaft connecting.
• Added some heart-wrenching visuals to beavers suffering from pollution, injuries, broken teeth, or those stung by bees. Yes, more than one effect can apply. F

Misc.

• All included maps have been updated to feature wild dandelions.
• Beavers and golems are now always able to carry at least one good, even if it exceeds their maximum carrying capacity. If it does, they will move slower.
• Implemented several new sounds for golems and their buildings.
• Cleaned up the order of ingredients displayed in buildings.
• Added a new “Swimming speed” bonus, currently provided by Lido.
• “Water handling speed” is no longer used when calculating swimming speed.
• “Advanced production” has been renamed “Assembly”.
• Each “X efficiency” bonus has been renamed “X speed” (for example: “Cooking efficiency” became “Cooking speed”) to be consistent with the universal “Work speed” bonus.
• “Strength” bonus has been renamed “Carrying capacity”.
• Some older tooltips, notifications, and status texts have been cleaned up.
• Added an additional tooltip to better explain why it’s impossible to migrate the population.
• Updated the Beaver/Golem switch and several other elements across the UI.
• ISpecificationService has been added. If you’re a modder, you may know what this means.

Bug fixes

• Fixed framerate drops caused by marking tress for cutting.
• Fixed several weird golem behaviours.
• Floodgates can now be synchronized in the Construction site stage.
• It is now possible to pause the Numbercruncher without pulling the plug.
• The productivity of paused buildings is now correctly calculated.
• After you dispose of all your golems in the settlement, you can now switch back to beavers on buildings that used to be set to golems.
• Fixed a bug with trees getting their preview and regular models blended together, as well as some other minor visual bugs.
• Fixed a broken animation of a broken golem.
• The farming speed bonus no longer applies to kits.
• Fixed an incorrect warning on flooded Breeding Pods.
• Fixed a rare game crash.
• Charging Station now correctly appears in the Population Panel.
• Fixed a bug with golem wreckage resetting its remaining duration upon saving and loading the game.