The sun is once again shining upon Mars, its rays reflected by equally bright faces of KOTOVOD workers, Dr. Katz himself not included. For it is today when major machinery upgrade takes place on Learning Factory!
KOTOVOD cat scientists have been working tirelessly to study the needs of cat customers for the past few months. It is very well known that human wants are infinite, but cats' wants, apparently, go far deeper and are infinite on so many levels!
This is why KOTOVOD has to deliver. And by KOTOVOD we mean our brave engineers, who now are at a truly heroic task of finding resources, researching new production buildings, creating supply chains and figuring out logistics and much, much more (with no extra payment, as usual). When it comes to making cats happier, no amount of work is excessive, Please get yourselves acquainted with the list of new available improvements to your factories and proceed to working! Glory to science! Glory to KOTOVOD!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150090/Learning_Factory/
Version 0.10.36 Released
New resources and items:
- Copper Veins, to be mined for Copper - base resource for crafting tech-producing buildings and scientific buildings
- Gold Veins, to be mined for Gold - a mid-game resource for crafting tech items and machine learning buildings. Cannot be mined manually
- Catnip Algae - like a catnip, but under the water. To keep it away from cats (for a short while)
- Juice - Snoop Katt's Catnip Juice: the ultimate soft drink for partying hard
- Bubble Gum - comes in two flavors: pure oats and shrimp-flavored oats
- Microchips - for building high-level machine learning models. They're kinda huge though
- Blings - who knows why cats want trinkets, but it's now your job to supply them, too
- Graphic Adapters - for building high-level machine learning models. Not that you can buy one in real life, can you?
- Hammocks - they're anti-grav, too! Because why not
- Concrete - a necessary basis for mid-game buildings. This description doesn't get more concrete than that
New cat types:
- Techno Cat - in search for everything high-tech
- Granny Cat - the cutest cats that can come by your Factory (but they only do so during Shopaholic Invasions)
New buildings:
- Algae Harvester (animated)
- Catnip Juice Brewery
- Bubble Gum Mixer
- Gold Digger
- Dredge (also for Gold)
- Microchip Assembler
- Graphic Adapter Assembler
- Business Request Splitter
- Specialized Smart Stores (for business requests): larger shelves, but sells only one category of goods
- Boom fences
- Small Catnip Algae Plant
New mechanics: Hype
- Cat's don't simply walk to the Factory anymore
- If a cat's request was satisfied, they might advise your Factory to a friend
- If a cat has left dissatisfied, they might talk a friend out of visiting your Factory
- The more cats were invited, the more will come, eventually
- Cats can only call friends of the same kind as themselves
- Cat Gates are now available for crafting since the beginning of the game
- Shopaholic Invasions now happen from time to time, bringing cats with unusual requests
- In the campaign, Hype mechanics only activates upon completing tutorial
New mechanics: Pyramid of requests
- Each cat type has a selection of favored goods, ranged by levels of value. If the requests from the lower level are not met, cats won't be asking for goods from upper levels
- When all request levels are satisfied, a cat might advance to another, more complicated kind of cat, with more complicated requests
New mechanics: Harvesting
- Pressing LMB on trees and such lets harvest a plant without destroying it (but brings less resource units)
- Scattered objects can now be picked by either LMB or RMB
- A text hints are displayed while harvesting/dismantling/picking up stuff
New Mechanics: Business requests
- Certain cats with a demand for big amounts of goods from specific categories, will now be appearing on the Factory. Supposedly this is for business needs (or so cats claim anyway)
- Business requests might include goods, not present in the pyramid for respective cat type
- All basic Stores now have 5 slots for goods
New mechanics: Tavern, Dormitory, researches and scientists
- Tavern can now be upgraded. As it becomes a more and more exquisite spot on Mars, more advanced cats tend to come by. They're more demanding in terms of onboarding packages and might ask for certain items if you want to hire them
- Alternatively, you can nurture your own dream team of scientists, as they now receive experience in research categories they work at, proportional to their personal input in said research
- Many new perks available for generation of scientists, including those influencing the amount of experience and the final quality of articles
- New outfits and hairstyles available for scientists!
- Every next room you unlock in the Dormitory becomes progressively more expensive
UI & UX
- Input and output zones are more visually highlighted when placing a building
- Building entrances now reflect efficiency and possibility of production from each tile
- Entrances now reflect possibility of laying an item on a tile
- Transporter placement by drawing mechanics has been improved
- Transporter placement by drawing is now turned on by default
- Classic transporter placement method is activated by pressing and holding 'Ctrl'
- All buildings can be placed over Transporter lines
- When building a structure over a locked tile, the latter will be highlighted with a lock icon
- Cat Splitters and Cat Manipulators are now copied along with cat settings
- Cat Splitters and Cat Manipulators can no longer be set up for picking cat types not yet discovered by the player
- Information about certain items is now given from the start of the game
- Information about items becomes unlocked upon researching the building
- Wiki articles display recipes for production buildings
- Tooltips improved throughout the game
- In construction tooltip shows the missing buildings and resources and does not get out of the range of screen
- The panel of crafted buildings can now display two rows of buildings if there are too many of them
- Minimap has two sizes and can be flipped back and forth
- The process of loading is displayed while loading
- Scenario editor now has item filtering category
- Clear research queue button added
- Clear Store stats button added
- Clear stat for machine learning button added
- Machine learning does not display items and cats not involved in training the Model
- Cotton spreading slightly slowed down
- Stores now display items that were requested but did not fit on the shelves
- Statistics has items, cats and additional data divided into groups, improved visual
- Events about items and cats now have tooltips and can take straight to the Wiki
- All buildings tab has been added to construction
- Filter by buildings added to the Wiki
Optimization and bugs
- Global game optimization
- Game saving optimization
- Game loading optimization
- Optimized play on ultra wide screens
- Machine learning optimization
- Tons of bugs fixed
Story
- Starting comic strip slightly changed
- New slide in the comics featuring Dr. Katz
- Gazillion of new achievements
- Including hidden achievements
- Including community suggested achievements
Other
- All localizations updated
- Especially Chinese
- Turkish fonts updated
- Updated visuals and interfaces for ultra wide screens
- New unique scientist cats
- New looks and outfits for cat scientists
- New apparels for cat customers
- Halloween menu theme. More Halloween stuff coming up in the next updates
Roadmap Milestones Reached:
- Specializing Shops
- New Cat-Researchers
- Cat Request Classification Model
- Educational edition of the Game
- Advanced Research II
- Educational Materials III
Let us know what you think and by all means, share your factory screenshots with us on Discord or Twitter
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How to Get More Involved
Going to Early Access is but the first step to glory (and eternal cat happiness). Wanna be part of what happens next? Head to this blog post and learn how to help make the game even more awesome!
Share Your Gameplay and Become Part of KOTOVOD History
Learning Factory needs your help! Record a 10 or more minutes of you playing the game, share a video using any way you see fit, write your name into Learning Factory credits and get a promo cat! Make history here