Greetings earthlings.
It's about time I divert my attention from my codebase, and try and explain myself as best I can.
First of all, I want to inform you that the game will be on sale the first time ever (and maybe last), from today to April 29th. Personally, I would have loved to skip sales all together, but SoS strangely isn't the top seller of the decade, so I want to try this once and see what it brings. The reason I chose to do so now, is that I have some good things happening all at once. Firstly, the renowned youtuber Sseth is releasing a SoS video today, and the digital stores promised to give me some extra exposure. We will see what it brings, I'll keep you posted.
Secondly, I'm not very active in the steam forums, as you might have noticed. This is simply because it eats a lot of my time, and I need to focus when I'm making new patches. I will be back when V66 is done, if you promise to be nice. The steam boards have degenerated a bit, I think we can all agree, as is expected as the game grows. The good old days are in the past.
If you want nearly daily rambles, I cordially invite you to the discord, where I post progress more regularly, and open to chats.
Discord Link
Thirdly, about V66. V66 is very special to me. It is most probably the patch before 1.0, and it's focused on polish and stability. I have not drastically altered anything. And I've made a special save thing, so maybe it will even be compatible with 1.0. Focus has been on mid-late game, mainly about getting the AI factions to behave, and present challenges from 1k population. I've been good with patch notes this time, so I'll include them here. In a perfect world, I would release the beta today, but I'm trying to come up with all kinds of distractions to keep me from playtesting, which I'm not too fond of, not sure why. But it should be released within a week, along with one of my astounding video logs.
What 1.0 means is that the game is in a state I'm happy with. It does not mean that development will stop, just focus will be shifted more towards polish and stability and balance. No new ground-breaking that breaks all saves. From 1.0 and forward, all saves and mods will be compatible. And when I'm done doing that, maybe 6 months from then, I will probably start working on an expansion pack.
Forgive my misspellings and other deficiencies.
MISC
- Campaign engine.
- The tutorial converted into a campaign.
- Selectable scripts when generating random game.
- Different "scenario" options. A scenario is a save that you can distribute with mods. Battles for instance.
- Trait system remade and reworked to work both or royals and subjects.
- Military equipment has efficiency based on race, added as a modding request. I've added some malus to the Argonosh.
- All kinds of racism is now connected in the world and your city, and other factions.
- Save resilience. Saves should now be able to be opened with different mod configurations, if the mods are not too exotic. Custom maps also have a good chance to work all the way to 1.0 as well.
- 14 new sountracks. The soundtrack is now complete.
- A nifty little property saver that saves for instance wall-type in room construction to your profile. Can be used to save many such QoL, suggestions are welcome.
- New menu background
- New Titles: The Undefeated, The Incompetent, The Merciful, The Merciless, The Wise, The Bureaucrat, The Clumsy, The Gourmand, The Entertainer, The Drunkard, The Caretaker, The Pleasurer, The Uniter
CITY
- Admin and knowledge now have sticky production, meaning values will not swing back and forth during the day.
- Accidents are back. Also some panic when accidents occur.
- Pimped the Embassy. Made it more space efficient. It now needs jewellery and fabric, although it's optional as the admin.
- Sick and injured people no longer counts as workforce, enabling you to control work priorities properly.
- Soldier fulfilment based on total number of soldiers, not per race.
- Grave mourners now stand beside the grave.
- Market rooms keep their settings when copied.
- Pasture output tiles capacity increased.
- Overtime now has significant penalty to happiness.
- Water pumps can now only be placed on ground water. You must plan for the canals.
- Data for resources and credits are now per day instead of per season.
- Resource piles have much greater capacity, reducing their amount and potential lag if the map becomes filled with them.
- Rooms listed in construction order
- removed entrance check when building rooms, allowing you to build in mountains.
- Saved blueprint now moved to the construction screen of individual rooms. Saved blueprints made more robust.
- Made some small changes to the bottom menu. I know you don't like this, but it's for the better. Some small changes might occur next patch, but after, I'm done.
- Food preference improved. You'll get a slight value when there is one out of many.
- Service overlays now better.
- Entertainment buildings keep better count of available services.
- Services such as food stall and restaurant now count to fulfilment by themselves. Restaurants are on average used ever 8th food stall day.
- Tree regrowth rate halved, and woodcutter production boosted.
- Auto employ removed from crafting buildings.
- More road types, and they look better.
- Road access remade. Now remade into preference, which works the same as the building materials.
- Hospitals now offer fulfilment to citizens.
- Multiple drink types. I only have two. Tavern has been pimped, and has an upgrade. Drink preference works just as food preference.
- Massage parlour added. What happens in there is up to everyone's imagination. In practise, it is just another service, but reduces health slightly.
- New room "stockade" is a holding place for prisoners. It is dirt cheap, and it is not a punishment. Prisons are now purely a punishment.
- Law is remade, so it starts at full fulfilment, then climbs down as crime starts appearing.
- Added escape events to stockades and prisons.
- Work priorities and the assignment mechanics got some love, and now work better, even when priority is 0.
- -Logistics remake-
- Two new major things to know about. Fetch and deliver orders. These are set per room. They are similar to the old "empty to" functionality.
- The warehouse have 4 available fetch orders. In addition, it also has a toggle for "regular fetch", and a true store function. It also has a limit that decides how much other storage fetchers may fetch from it.
- The hauler has the same things, but only two fetch orders.
- The old fetch mechanics is thus retired. Warehouses will only grab stuff from the ground and from production rooms, if no fetch orders are issued.
- Logistics are nerfed a bit. They have less radius, and less carry capacity. The carry capacity is based on race and can be upgraded. Garthimi sucks, Dondorian and Cretonian excel.
- Transports have 4 delivery orders available. Their capacity is now 60, and they will depart more regularity. Their speed is slower than a regular pleb, but they obviously carry a lot more. They are good for moving big numbers of resources. For few numbers, a warehouse will do.
- Export depots and military supply depots work similarly to warehouses, in that they grab resources on the ground, and also have pull orders.
- The "export when over" is thus scrapped and replaced by the power of the pull orders.
- The army supply works like a warehouse with 2 fetch orders available.
- Exposure tweaks. You must now provide wells and hearths all over the city, as everyone will become cold and hot. Clothes will only decrease the frequency of getting cold/hot, thus making the city more efficient.
- Divisions when sent out to an army will take some time to return.
- Option to send out divisions even if they're not fully trained.
- Raids pimped up. They no longer spawn an army, they attack directly. You have a chance to fight them on the field.
- Raid chance is reworked. Now based on riches (resources, slaves and credits) and your military power. Also your military reputation.
- Raids no longer scale as you defeat them until you're faced with impossible odds. Instead they are randomized each time.
- Raiders have a captain and a name.
- There are a number of unconditional raids added that you can't avoid.
- Roundness is now an addative value.
- Made some visual changes to walls.
- Some 20+ techs added and tech tree restructured.
- Refined how slave submission works.
WORLD
- Generation now tries to base the size of the region on capacity, meaning larger, infertile regions.
- Roads made a bit more pronounced.
- Some color and sprite changes.
- Editor. To share maps you make, make a mod and put the save from the editor into custom folder.
- Havens now have lower requirements in order to join you. More will join if you exceed the requirements though.
- Build points removed. World buildings rebalanced.
- "Organisation" a new world thing and is based on how much workforce you have allocated. Replaces distance, although distance is still there.
- Organisation lets you either expand though upgrades or through region amounts.
- Building buildings now has a new flow. Loyalty and health is based on the population target, not current population. Enables you to know exactly what to build.
- Building buildings is done in bulk that lets you experiment with different configurations without spending money.
- Prosecution in you capitol also affects regional happiness.
- Representation of species in your capitol affects regional happiness.
- Representation of nobles in your capitol affects regional happiness.
- Prices have been fixed all over, and is now derived from the prices of goods. For instance slaves cost their food and upkeep during breeding, and mercenaries their equipment and training.
- Region generation improved.
- Battle stats for armies and factions. Military reputation based on your prowess. Affects AI factions and in-city stats.
- Mercenary rework. Scales with your size, and have a long cooldown when disbanded, and low replenishment. Also correctly prices, more than it will cost you to train your own.
- Raid stance added for army. Allows you to get slaves and resources.
- Artillery is now an army supply.
- Only rations and clothes are mandatory, drinks improve morale.
FACTIONS
- Opinion "threat" now reworked. Based on population vs Ai's population, meaning small states will hate you more/faster. Some additional stats added.
- UI of opinion enhanced.
- Reworked emmisaries. Now a diplomatic point system. Points allocated will stick to the court when someone dies. Better UI for this.
- New "sabotage" diplomacy option in order to get a faction to attack you without getting a betrayal penalty.
- Betrayal added. If you act like a jerk, you will be severely punished by all factions.
- Factions will not attack you simple because they do not like you. They will make sure they can beat you in auto resolve.
- Factions with low opinion will secretly convince other factions to attack you with time.
- New diplomatic options available:
- Alliance -> a military alliance, you will share enemies. You can get a cheap alliance by helping someone out that is at war.
- Colleague -> a non aggression pact. Promise to not attack each other.
- Vassal -> become, or make a vassal. A vassal pays a yearly tribute to its overlord, and is protected by it. As an overlord, you can pick what kind of tribute you want, and as a vassal, you'll pay 15% of your shit each year.
- Protector -> above reversed
- Join Federation -> Unite. Pay a hefty sum to have a faction join yours without bloodshed.
- New trait system for royalties. Shapes a unique personality that has a large impact on your relations. Hopefully this will prompt you to assassinate more.
- All factions now has an army. These armies grows slightly as you expand.
- Initial generation of factions makes sure you will have nice progression. The neighbouring factions are immune to events, and will stay there until you're ready to expand.
- Slave trade.
- War diplomacy fixes.
- The betray system hopefully fixes exploits, such as selling a region and then attacking it shortly after.
- Opinion has less impact on trade prices.
SOUND
- Reworked the sound engine.
- Added multiple new sounds in theory, but I haven't added much of the actual sounds.
- Sounds that you can be added by modding:
- -Room ambiance
- -Room on click
- Furthermore, there will be a variety of sounds coming from the subjects themselves, but I'm saving these until after 1.0, as it will not affect saves.
MODDING
- Some changes to scripts. Now there are selectable scripts, and forced scripts. Forced scripts can be adding ui tools or whatnot, selectable is a traditional script. Scripts are selected on a new random game.
