Greetings Commanders!
As we are approaching the release, it's time for another dev diary! Today, it’s time to dive into one of our favorite topics—production, logistics, and all the exciting things that make your industries tick! Production and logistics are the heart of your empire, where the production of weapons, machinery, and supplies becomes central to an empire's ability to sustain war efforts. In Kaiserpunk, production runs both deep and wide, with a wide variety of resources, along with multiple refinement and production stages.
Heavy industry, mass production, and the 20th century... I don't think we could have thought of a better fit. Add weapons and combat machinery to the mix, and sadly, that sums up the first half of the last century. On top of that, it may seem cold, but it's also fitting that your residents, despite the fact that you take care of them (or should at least), end up as faceless numbers, a statistic, churned out by the ever-growing industry of your new capital and the ceaseless fighting. The 20th century was both beautiful for the resilience and innovation humanity showed, and at the same time, very ugly and dark. An interesting and stark contradiction.
But let's not get caught up in philosophy, shall we. Let’s focus on the industry part: the production chains and getting goods from one place to another. We've covered this in quite some detail in an earlier dev diary that you can read, so I thought I'd run through some of the key questions. The 21st is just around the corner, and we'd best be prepared ;).
A production chain is a series of buildings that starts with one resource, refines it, adds more resources into the mix, and in the end, spits out a completely different resource. A chain can be as simple as one or two buildings to create construction plywood, or it can consist of a long series of branches, gradually zeroing in to create that light bomber you've been eyeing for your air force.
None of these goods can teleport or fly. They need to be delivered from building to building, which is where depots come in. Depots dispatch transporter trucks to carry the resources around your city. Be careful, though, since the number of trucks available in a single depot is limited and before you know it, you could be shovelling more work onto a depot than it can carry out. A nice little detail that you can do, as the high-and-mighty governor, is to place buildings that depend on each other close to one another. That way, they can skip the "depot step" entirely.
Upgrade before building anew! Almost all buildings in Kaiserpunk can be upgraded in some way. Always look to that first, as it comes with much lower construction and operational costs. Money doesn't grow on trees, not even in Kaiserpunk. And you'll need the money... training and supplying armies is not cheap. A strong, resilient industry is the cornerstone of any powerful global empire.
Oh, and I almost forgot: experiment! Try different approaches and have fun. Be creative! Use the actions at the bottom of the HUD to your advantage. Copy blocks of your city that work perfectly and use the Move tool to shuffle things around. You’d be surprised how much you can gain by giving your city a nice “facelift” and a bit more organization.
We hope you enjoyed this dev diary! To make sure we cover any questions you might have, we’re hosting an AMA over on Reddit this Thursday, March 13th, at 6 PM CET / 9 AM PST. You can start asking us questions now, though! We look forward to answering them!
Until next time - Stay well everyone!
Overseer Games