Brace yourselves - this is a big one! Honestly, we overdid it a bit here and are changing to smaller-more-often in the future when it comes to updates.
Rework: Farming
Farming is one of our three core pillars of play - some would even say it's the central pillar. You will interact with it a heap during play. Until now the farming in Planetation has been a simple vertical slice to allow us to test other systems. Now that Planetation has all its core systems in place (as of Update 0.15), it's time to come back and flesh out all of our pillars, with farming first.
Here's what's changed in the rework.
Hoe
We have removed Farm Plots entirely. Static, constrained areas to plant your crops are the easy option when it comes to implementing farming - something we see in other survival games that include farming as a secondary feature. We believe that the power to lay out crop fields exactly as you wish is an important step to ownership of your farm, so we added the Hoe.
The Hoe is a craftable, durability-based tool that allows you to Till any patch of ground ready for planting. This also marks our first durability-based tool with more to come.
Crop Plots
The Hoe creates Crop Plots (small areas of tilled ground). Seeds can now only be planted in empty Crop Plots. By design, new Crop Plots snap and align to a grid - the intent here is to temper the freeform nature of laying out your fields with the uniformity and structure that farming enthusiasts have come to love about the genre.
New Crops
We've added three fully featured brand new Crops, but if we tell you what they are that would spoil things. Instead, here's a mysterious photograph:
Each new Crop has a unique way to acquire its seeds, and a range of uses from composting to selling to just straight up eating.
Pests
Planting your Crops is not everything though, because then you have to protect them. One of the biggest threat to Crops are the Pests that periodically affect them as they grow. Pests are removed in different and creative ways depending on the Pest, with hints available through the scanner.
Rework: Composter
Biosolids and Nitrate
The Composter has undergone a rework for similar reasons. Where anything put in it would previously give Biosolids rather quickly, now only select produce will decay into Biosolids over a much longer period of time (per slot, so fill it up!). Nitro will now decay into Nitrate, and these two materials together are used to create Compost. The Composter UI has received lots of love to convey these new mechanics.
Compost
Compost Catalysts found in the world (mostly disgusting bugs) will turn into Compost given the right raw materials. Compost can be spread onto Crop Plots for special effects, such as increased pest resistance or reduced water consumption. All Compost increases growth rate - so the choice between them is up to personal preference.
New: Rocketship
You're on Perdition growing explosive mushrooms and literal Iron, which has the offworld corpo's frothing at the bit to trade with you. Build a Rocketship Platform and they will send down a ship to collect your produce, ready for market. You get paid in real Dollarweed, and can peruse the Daily Deals to spend it on useful materials.
Polish: Exposure
The key feature of our previous Update 0.16 was Exposure, a lovely mechanic where you slowly cook like a chicken over a fire. The main point of player feedback we received was that it wasn't obvious when your Exposure level changed, so we've added an animated screen effect alongside a new sound effect whenever you become more Exposed. We hope this helps!
Other Stuff
Some of these changes are already live as of 0.16.3, so if you've already read those notes you can safely skip to "Make Clouds provide Shade".
Fix tooltips sometimes showing "1 + x%", for Attributes such as Size and Fertility
Fix grass not being removed by Crop Plots
Fix rare crash when killing an enemy with Burning
Fix rare crash when dying while Burning
Add hit vulnerable/resistant sound effect
Add "Take All" button to Gravestone UI (thanks psychoxchicken on Discord)
Polish Gravestone UI
Fix jittery rotations of other players when they're standing still
Remove rotation lag for weapons held by the player (thanks psychoxchicken on Discord)
Reduce player energy recharge from 30/sec to 15/sec
Increase Mongrel health from 25 to 40
Increase Bonebark Tree size range from +/-30% to +/-50%
Change seed planting back to left clicking the seed, instead of pressing E on the Crop Plot
Increase Mongrel Leap damage radius from 100 to 200
Fix some item icons rarely being rendered empty
Add secondary action inputs (such as Rotate for the Place action) to the tooltip
Move randomly spawned Gravestones to always surround the Thunderbug Hive
Change the initial stage of every Crop to give its seed back when harvested
Significantly improve performance (by up to 20% in many cases, however this remains a priority for us)
Make Clouds provide Shade for Exposure
Sync cloud locations between all clients
Add screen vignette effect+sound effects when your Exposure level changes
Rename Protato Crop -> Protato Plant
Rename Nitro Crop -> Boomshroom
Increase Thunderbug Hive swarm interval from 3 to 8 sec
Change Plant action description to reference in-world days for crop growth times
Fix bug where random variation of looted items was not rolled with even distributions
Increase base Composter decay time from 5sec to 5mins
Remove Farm Plot
Increase Dollarweed stack size from 1024 to 4096
Greatly increase rewards from Cardboard Boxes in the Abandoned Bunker
Increase Groundwater Pump water storage from 200ml to 600ml
Reduce Groundwater Pump refill interval from 15sec to 10sec
Change Night time roaming enemies to also spawn near your farm when you are on it
Increase time it takes for a Crop to run out of water from 3 1/3 minutes to 10 minutes
Fix Crop UI popups not appearing at the correct viewing angles after a game is loaded
Fix rare client-side crash when planting Crops
Expand cost section with text on relevant Tooltips
Add growth information to scanned Crop tooltips
Fix client crash when approaching the Geode in the Mesa
Fix Fling Pad fling sound being heard globally
Reduce cost of Nail recipe and increase yield
Add alternate recipe for Nail that costs stone
Add Plant action to Geneseeds (temporary until Farming Rework Part 2, requires purification)
Fix clients getting duplicate reprisals from stabilising a Geneseed in the Genehouse
Fix Genehouse Stabiliser stage inputs sometimes not appearing on client side UI
Drop Scrap Metal from destroyed Turrets in the Abandoned Bunker
Add add-reprisal console command
Fix Iron Rage encounter spawning Quartz Shards and Weak Magnets detached from each other
Fix large item counts distorting the gaps between inventory slots
Add Cool condition information to Slaughtermelon Slice description
Disable Mongrel leap against immovable targets (such as fences and turrets)
Greatly reduce the amount of Dollarweed Seed Bags that jobs reward
Fix Quartz Slivers dropping the full amount of Quartz Dust from a normal Quartz
Known Bugs
Grass sometimes disappears from the world for a short time
Draft quests linger after building a Turret on a Hardpoint
Karrot leaves have polygon-shaped holes in them
Client screen shakes when changing between items on your quickbar
DevLog 005
We've timed the latest DevLog so that it can serve as a patch summary. Enjoy!
Roadmap
As with every release, we have updated our roadmap accordingly. Our next update is a "Minor" update, meaning it will be smaller and sooner than this one. It will add a new feature in Pockets - allowing you to fully customise each slot of your inventory - as well as a huge backend rework aimed at big performance gains.