Automation Update Out Now!

Howdy, Exofarmers! The day you've all been waiting for is here: it's the next big update! Read on to learn what's new and what's coming in the future!

Automation Update Out Now!

The Automation update is all about improving your day-to-day work and quality of life.

This update is heavily focused on the mid- to late-game (mainly from Milestone 5 and beyond), but includes some changes to the early game as well.

🏭Automation

Tired of running back and forth between different Crafting Constructs? Having trouble keeping track of what’s made where? Not enough hours in the day to craft what you need? No more! You can now automatically craft items in many Crafting Constructs using the new Automator.

To automate crafting, follow these steps:

• Build an Automator

• Connect an Automator to a compatible crafting construct with a Connector Pipe

  • An Automator can be connected to multiple crafting constructs by using Pipe Splitters

• Choose a recipe inside the crafting construct and set it to Auto-craft (default key H/Right Stick Click)

• Put the resources required for the recipe in the Automator's storage

The Automator will automatically keep crafting the set item as long as it has enough resources.

Inputs that receive resources and Outputs that eject resources have been added to many Constructs. Use the Connector Pipes with these to send resources to and from Constructs, including some storage.

The first Automator is unlocked at Milestone 9, with more automation Constructs unlocked all the way up to the new Milestone 12.

Here's the compatible Constructs:

Connector Pipes, Splitters, Mergers

Connector Pipes are used to connect Constructs to each other. 

Splitters allow you to split the output of a Connector Pipe into multiple directions.

Mergers allow you to combine the input of multiple Connector Pipes into the same output. 

Water Pump

Automated Water Pumps can be used to pump water from rivers, lakes, and the ocean directly into Watering Drone Stations and Water Troughs using Connector Pipes - no Irrigation Hose required! This means that you can fully automate your watering! There's also the new Water Reservoir construct for storing large amounts of water.

⚡️Energy

Energize your production with the new energy system. Build Generators to keep your production superpowered for a crafting speed boost!

Energy is intended to streamline power consumption for large farms and help you to scale up your production.

Advanced Constructs- such as the Seed Maker II - will now consume Energy, which can be produced using Generators.

While you meet or exceed your minimum required amount of Energy, Constructs and Drones will be Energized, meaning they work 2,5x faster. If your Energy needs exceed your available Energy, your Constructs will stop being Energized until you increase your Energy above the minimum required amount. They’ll keep working at normal speed though! We wanted a system that rewards players for building infrastructure without punishing those who want to focus on other things.

Combustion Generators need Fuel to produce Energy. Work your way up to Solar Panels for free Energy!

Energy is produced and used globally, meaning Generators and Crafting constructs don’t have to be in Farm Range to count. This means you can put your Generators wherever you like - solar park, anyone?

Drone Stations no longer need Fuel to operate and can instead be Energized. Less running around re-fueling, more farming and crafting!

The first Generator is unlocked at Milestone 5, with more unlocked over the following Milestones.

👷Building Improvements

We know y'all love to build, so we're making some highly requested improvements to the building system.

Snapping has been improved, especially for larger Pieces - meaning fewer instances of snapping halfway down Foundations or not aligning properly. Several Build Pieces are now more contextually smart as well: Doors will snap to doorways, Windows in window holes, and Roofs to the tops of walls.

We have loosened the restrictions on where Constructs can and can’t be placed, so they will now be blocked or have invalid slopes less often. This will make it easier overall to place things in the world.

You can also click and drag to continually remove Constructs. The days of having to mash to demolish a house is over!

A lot of y'all have asked for click-and-drag-placement of things like Walls. While we did not have time to get it in for this this update, we have heard you and want to get it in for 1.0! Same goes for having more decorations and modular building pieces.

⛽Fuel Overhaul

We’ve seen a lot of players struggling with Fuel, feeling like it’s an annoying mechanic that gets in the way of playing the game. Our design philosophy is to reward rather than punish, and Fuel has not been in line with that.

We decided to change things around: Fuel is no longer required to use the Mech, and the Mech will start without it by default.

Having Fuel will instead improve your Mech, granting the following effects:

• Mod Chips are enabled

• Tool speed is increased

• Thruster boosting is enabled

We feel this strikes a balance between making Fuel an important part of your resource management/progression and not limiting y'all too much in ways that doesn't create interesting gameplay.

🦿Deeper Mech Movement

We wanted to make the mech more fun to move around in during moment to moment gameplay, especially across long distances. To do this, we’re introducing some new movement tech for more skilled play.

Sliding will no longer slow you down as much, and if you were running before a slide you will now keep running afterwards. You can now also cancel out of slides early to maintain your momentum by pressing the sprint button at the right time. 

When sprinting at max speed with your thruster bar full, you can do a Thruster Lunge. Press the jump button to use up your bar and quickly blast upwards and forwards. To balance this, we have changed the thruster recharge rates.

Furthermore, thrusters are now better at breaking falls!

These additions should make moving around in the mech feel more awesome.

🚀Exofarmer Jetpack

The Exofarmer now has a Jetpack, vastly improving your ability to get around your farm! The Jetpack will allow you to fly freely within Home Areas, as well as give you some extra air time while outside.

The Jetpack is available from the start of the game as a new part of the Exofarmer’s core kit. Here's the controls:

• Press and hold Space/A Button while on the ground or press Space/A Button while in mid-air to activate

• Press or hold Space/A Button to ascend

• Press or hold CTRL/B Button to descend

• Double press CTRL/B Button or Space/A Button, or land on the ground, to deactivate

Tools and Build Mode can be used while the Jetpack is active.

Our main goal with this is to make building and painting easier, but we’re looking forward to seeing what other creative uses y’all find for it.

📈Performance Improvements

We have optimized various parts of the game logic, UI, and animation, resulting in a massive improvement to overall CPU performance. While we expect this to be noticeable for pretty much all of you, late-game save files with lots of stuff in the game world will see the most drastic improvement. In our testing, we have seen FPS improvements of around 50-65% on average. Depending on your hardware, settings, and save file, you may see smaller or larger gains than this - in some cases we have observed improvements as large as 90%.

Here are some comparisons on a mid-game save file in single-player, running on an Intel Core i9-13900KF and Nvidia RTX 4070 SUPER, using very low graphical settings to minimize GPU bottlenecking:

In addition to this general optimization, we have done extensive work on multiplayer performance, particularly when hosting a session. The more players are in your session, and the more elements need to be replicated, the bigger the performance increase will be. While we can’t guarantee a locked 60 FPS across the board, the experience should be on a completely different level of smoothness.

☀️New Progression Content

This update adds Milestone 12: Solar Energy, which includes:

Crafting Recipes

• Lumtwig Oil (Oil Mixer) [Moved from Milestone 11]

Constructs

• Solar Generator

• Automator II

• Automated Water Pump

Mod Chip Recipes

• Spike Saw Sweeping Strike Damage Lv. 3 - Increases the damage of the Spike Saw Sweeping Strike by 15.

• All Transform Mode Movement Speed Lv. 2 - Increases the movement speed of all Transform Modes by 7.5%.

• Trailblazer Boost Charges Lv. 2 - Adds 2 additional boost charges to the Trailblazer Transform Mode.

• Trailblazer Boost Recharge Lv. 2 - Increases the boost recharge rate in the Trailblazer Transform Mode by 30%.

• Water Efficiency Lv. 3 - Reduces the water consumption of the Irrigation Hose by 15%.

Parts Recipes

• Irrigation Hose Mk. 6

• Seed Shooter Mk. 6

• Spike Saw Mk. 6

• Sprout Cannon Mk. 6

• Vacuum Harvester Mk. 6

Other

• Farm Center build limit increased to 4

🔧Mech Customization Quick Wins

We've heard you loud and clear about the difficulties of customizing your mech. We're planning a bigger overhaul of the system for the 1.0 update, but we found the time to sneak in some smaller improvements for the Automation Update.

Updated Mech Specs

We've improved the Mech Specs section of the Mech Depot to display more useful information, giving you more insight into how your customization impacts your Mech.

We also added a Mech Specs tab to the Utility Menu, which allows you to see your current Mech stats and any active buffs while out and about. This means you don't have to go to the Mech Depot or Farm Center to see them!

Mark All as Seen

Sometimes you've got a lot of new stuff, and clicking through all of them is too much of a hassle! That's why there's now a button to mark all as seen, which removes the notification symbol on them. Pressing this will remove the notification on anything below the current screen in the hierarchy, but not above. This means you could, for example, mark every Right Arm as seen while leaving the Left Arm.

Full Patch Notes

Highlights

• New Feature: Automation

  • You can now automate crafting by adding the items to an Automator construct and connecting it to a crafting construct via Connector Pipes.

• New Feature: Energy

  • Some constructs utilize Energy to operate faster. Requires construction of generators to maintain the increased operating speed.

• New Feature: Water distribution

  • The new Automated Water Pump and Water Reservoir constructs can hold water and distribute it to connected drone stations and troughs.

• New Feature: Exofarmer Jetpack

  • Jump higher, glide down to a safe landing, and fly around freely inside Farm Areas.

• New Feature: Deeper Mech Movement

  • Perform a Boost Lunge by activating fully charged thrusters while running, and cancel the slide slowdown by pressing "Sprint" to keep the momentum going and get around the world faster.

• New Milestone

  • Rebalanced existing milestones (Bronze Tech is now extended to include Milestone 6)

• Massively improved overall CPU performance

  • Particularly noticeable on late-game farms but expect a boost in any CPU-limited situation

  • Especially improved performance for players hosting populated multiplayer sessions

    • Dev note: It is recommended that the player with the most powerful machine hosts. Devices at or below the CPU performance of an Xbox Series console should not expect a fully stable 60 FPS experience when hosting a session with 3-4 players on a late-game save.

• Fuel rework 

  • Fuel is no longer required to use the Mech, and the Mech will start without it by default. Having Fuel now grants a buff that increases Mech Tool speed, while being without Fuel will disable the effect of Mod Chips and the Boost Lunge ability.

Changes

• Mech movement

  • The Mech's thrusters are now better at slowing down falls

  • Mech sprint speed upgrades now max out at 350%

• Building

  • Improved snapping behavior when placing modular constructs (walls, floors, roofs, etc.)

  • Holding down the "Recycle" key will now rapidly recycle anything aimed at

  • Increased structural integrity on concrete and metal modular constructs by 50%, brick constructs by 25%

  • Stair and roof constructs will now start out facing away from the player when selected

  • Made collision and slope check when placing most constructs more lenient

  • Made fence segments non-relocatable

  • Made several constructs interactable from more angles

  • Significantly reduced vertical step size when placing roads in "Free Mode"

• Fuel

  • Removed fuel cost of walking with the Mech (unless over-encumbered)

  • Adjusted fuel cost scaling to be less severe at high Mech power levels

  • Reduced Seed Shooter fuel cost

  • Reduced size of fuel bar and related elements on HUD

  • Hid fuel bar on HUD when "Fuel Consumption" setting is set to 0x

  • Lowered the Mech's walking speed when overencumbered and out of fuel

• Drones

  • Drones no longer require oil to operate and can work twice as fast when supplied with Energy

  • Changed the water tank capacity of Drone Station and Drone Station II to 10 and 20 respectively and reduced the water carrying capacity of their drones to 5 and 10 (meaning they will refill more often)

  • Reduced the build cost of Drone Station II

  • Drone Stations are now filled by rain

• Hauling

  • Reduced wind-up time when the Mech throws large objects from 1.2 seconds to 0.5 seconds

  • Weakened the Mech's thrusters when towing trailers to help avoid flipping them over

  • Increased the storage and hauling capacities of all trailers

    • Large object trailer: 12 > 16

    • Large object trailer II: 24 > 32

    • Storage trailer: 200 > 400

    • Storage trailer II: 500 > 1000

  • Increased the HP of all trailers 

    • Large object trailer: 150 > 200

    • Large object trailer II: 200 > 500

    • Storage trailer: 150 > 200

    • Storage trailer II: 200 > 500

    • Dev note: Existing trailers will have their max health increased but their current health will remain what it was before the update, so don't be shocked if many of them will appear damaged after the update.

  • Reduced the hauling slots of Iron Chunks from 3 to 2

  • Increased Large Object Platform capacity from 24 to 36

• Mech parts & Mod chips

  • Increased the effect of Lock-on targets Lv. 2 and 3 mod chips

    • Lv. 2: 100 > 150

    • Lv. 3: 150 > 300

  • Repurposed the Power Armor set as the next progression stage after FM-04. Lola no longer sells the base Power Armor set (but still provides the variants), the cosmetic is instead unlocked by crafting the parts

• Farming

  • Decreased probability of rainy weather (~32% -> ~20%)

  • Empty mounds will now dry after two days instead of one

  • Increased the amount of times Colorflowers can grow flowers before withering from 2 to 5

• Environment

  • Wild crop clusters now fully respawn after a fixed amount of days, with a cooldown per-cluster, instead of a globally and a little each day

    • Dev note: This means you won't always find crops in the same spots every day, but you can keep a mental note of harvested clusters and come back for a full harvest a few days later.

  • Floaters in Hexagon Valley have been replaced by a less numerous but more aggressive variant

  • Floaters now also drop Refillite

• Animals

  • Incubator lenses can now affect Radiant Eggs

  • The large/small animal effect from red and clear lenses has been standardized to be exactly 25% bigger or smaller (this may not affect already existing animals)

  • The rare animal chance from yellow lenses has been increased from 5% to 10%

• UI

  • Added a Mech Specs section in the Tab menu to display various mech stats

  • Added element to the inventory UI that shows how many fuel bars a fuel item is worth

  • Added UI elements that show selected object's Storage, Water, and Hauling capacities where relevant

  • Made selection with mouse cursor more generous in most radial menus

  • Tweaked Mech and Exofarmer health bar gradient colors to be less severe at high health

• Other

  • The "Color Me Impressed" achievement now unlocks based on items added to your Mech's inventory instead of per-save item discovery

  • When using the "Save & Quit" option in the pause menu, the game will now only quit if saving succeeded, otherwise displaying an error message in the bottom-right corner of the screen

  • Increased range of the "Auto-save Interval" setting from 4-12 minutes to 1-30 minutes, now adjustable in single minute increments

  • Tweaked squash-and-stretch effect to be more noticeable on small constructs and less extreme on large constructs

  • Added Spirepot Sprouts to Ulf's selection of tradeable sprouts

  • Adjusted the cost of various constructs and upgrades to reflect their new milestone unlock

  • Allowed cursor to exit the game viewport when in menus and not in fullscreen mode

Bug fixes

• Crashes, Saves & Performance

  • Reduced risk of game crashing for various reasons

  • Potentially fixed rare issue where blank data was used when saving a player's data, clearing their personal progress

    • Dev note: We're aware of player save data disappearing, but don't have enough information yet to say if this was the cause of all such instances. We’re gathering more telemetry data to provide a more robust solution if needed.

  • Fixed the "Auto-save Interval" setting not doing anything

  • Removed particle effect from mutated plant items that was causing severe performance drops

• Building & Constructs

  • Recycling a construct should no longer regrow grass below if it's on top of another grass-blocking construct

  • Fixed issue preventing the Medium Water Trough from being repainted

  • Fixed foundation constructs snapping to non-foundation holograms

    • Dev note: We know there is demand for stackable foundations. This fix aligns behavior with the current intended design, but we may revisit the question in the future.

  • Fixed fences being recyclable in randomly sized chunks instead of individual pieces

  • Fixed construct holograms placed by neighbors being individually copiable and relocatable, instead of targeting entire outpost/home

  • Fixed Storage Shed placement using incorrect points to find foundational surfaces

  • Fixed Farm Center not being relocatable for clients if at Farm Center limit

  • Reduced risk of Highways w/ Railing holograms being blocked when snapped together

  • Fixed an issue where clients did not see any textures on Amber and Crystal lamps

  • Fixed issue where Watering Drone II consumed incorrect amount of water

• UI

  • Fixed the "Kick Player" prompt appearing behind other UI elements

  • Disabled tab navigation while entering and exiting mech customization menu

• Camera

  • Likely fixed first person camera sometimes slowly drifting inside or away from Exofarmer

  • Fixed the Exofarmer aiming too far to the left with the Paint Gun (third-person and others)

  • Reduced jitter on tool arm while changing aim when Mech uses certain tools

• Other

  • Fixed the Mech's sprint speed having an unintended soft cap, making stacked mods decreasingly effective

  • Fixed threshold value determining if a trailer is flipped over not being consistent for everything

  • Fixed large object duplication via leaving and rejoining as a client holding objects

Known Issues (will be adressed in upcoming hotfix)

• Connector Pipes

  • Pipe holograms not saving and loading properly between sessions

  • Junctions not snapping to previously occupied connections

  • Junctions not snapping to Pipe holograms

  • Collision issues when placing Pipes, Splitters, and Mergers

• Mech

  • Mech's pedals and gauges sometimes not animating

  • Mech being able to fully brake almost instantly when applying input opposite velocity

    • Dev note: "We are unintentionally applying two different braking forces here."

• Other

  • Coziness and Farm Center bounds not properly replicating to clients

  • Clients loading in with a maximum 50L in their water tank, regardless of equipped mods

  • Rare crash related to Tools equipping items

  • Egg Incubator having inconsistent day count on radiant eggs after loading a save

  • Created Delivery Missions not loading properly

Beta Branch Closing Soon

Thank you to everyone who tried out this update on the beta branch! Your feedback helped us fix a lot of bugs and make sure the update was in a good state.

We will disable the beta branch in the coming days so we can focus on maintaining the current update and to start working on the next one.

Your beta save files will be transferred to the main branch so you’ll be able to keep playing like normal.

Because the beta will no longer be available, we will also be locking the beta forums on both Steam and Discord.

Roadmap Update and 1.0

With the Automation update out the door, our next goal is the big one. That's right: it's 1.0 time.

It's very important to us that we make the 1.0 update a satisfying payoff for all of you who have stuck by us these past few years. It's gonna be a big update, with not only the final biome and the conclusion of the story but a whole bunch of new features and improvements as well.

The big scope of this update means it will take some time before it's ready to launch. Our current goal is to launch the 1.0 update before the end of 2026. We want to focus entirely on this, which means we are not planning any other major updates this year. We'll of course still be releasing hotfixes, and we'll keep y'all updated on what's going on with development.

Join our Discord for updates on development, events, and other fun stuff during the year!

And yes, your existing saves will carry over to 1.0.

Now Published By Coffee Stain! On Sale!

We've officially joined the Coffee Stain family! We're now published by Coffee Stain Publishing. Their support in bringing you the Automation Update has been vital and most satisfactory - one might even say that they're the GOATs of publishing. They really rock ...deeply .........galactically... This opens up a ton of cool possibilities for us and we're very excited to work together with them on 1.0 and future projects.

As part of that, we're included in the the Coffee Stain Steam Sale! From 6 March - 18 March, you can save 40% on Lightyear Frontier and all DLC.

Check out the Coffee Stain Publisher Sale here!

If you have a hankering for building, crafting, and exploring alien planets, why not check out the Far Out Factory bundle?

View game page

Wrap-up

We're in the home stretch now, gang. The game has come a long way since the Early Access launch, and we've still got a bit left to go. Once this update has been successfully rolled out we're gonna immediately shift to working on 1.0. We have a clear plan of what to do and we're very excited to get it in your hands.

This update contains a lot of things many of y'all have been requesting for a long time. We hope they live up to your expectations, and we're thankful for everyone sharing their feedback and helping us make this game as good as possible.

Until next time - see you out there in the stars, Exofarmers!