Greetings Pilgrims;
This update marks a big milestone for the game, as we are now virtually content ready for release. There is still a lot left to do in terms of balance, tweaking the experience, and the major visual overhaul, but mechanically, the game is looking great.
What Is In This Patch
You Got Cut
Some unused aspects and stats have been trimmed or temporarily removed. When I create certain things I over build in case we need additional complexity in certain systems. It is easier to trim out unnecessary complexity than it is to add it in later. So, for now certain things were trimmed such as tolerance, and game options.
I need Help
The help glossary which contained 21 entries has been expanded to 76 entries. This makes the vast majority of topics and questions players might have readily available to be answered.
What Do I Do
Mission objectives have been updated to be viable from start to finish, offering you an overarching idea of what to head towards next to progress. These main objectives don't hold your hand or ask for specific things, but they offer a general idea of what you need to reach next on your way to completion.
Miles of Milestones
Much like the mission objectives milestones and their connected to steam achieves have been taken from 15 to 40. Milestones offer a cash payout for doing certain things, some of these things are related to beating the game and some are just optional things you may or may not do. Each gives an achievement when completed, a bit of funding, and posts your total score to the leaderboard.
Parts For Days
Many new parts have been added to the parts constructor as well as manufactured goods to the advanced manufacturer and additional recipes were added to the grinder. These additions make new materials from the newly acquired resources expanding what recipes you need to craft advanced buildings and machines.
Recipe Overhaul
All the advanced recipes have been overhauled using the newly created parts. This is still early stages and you can expect recipes to be modified as we test the game as an experience. I aim to offer meaningful progression that doesn't feel too tedious or too simple. This will take time to nail down, but the first draft of the recipes is now live.
Mission Guidance And Tips
The small guidance and tips have been updated and extended into the late game. For those who want these tips, they will offer you some solid information to help you succeed on Ceres.
Death Is Inevitable
Colonists can now die. Based on the newly added colonist hunger and thirst settings, colonists will now die if they receive no food or water for a long enough period. If they do receive food and water this will reduce their chances of death, but starving them now comes at a cost.
Power Updated
All the new beta facilities were set to 0 MW of power usage to make life easy, but now as we move to test the game as a whole power requirements have been added. You will now need to produce enough power.
New Power
To go along with this update to the power requirements of facilities I felt it necessary to add a new palceable power unit that didn't require colonists. I have added the "Hydro Power Converter". This unit is placed outside of your base and will only function if terraforming is beyond 25% (where rain can begin) and it generates 50 MW of power. It will be very helpful in the later stages of the game when power requirements begin to get high.
New Decorations
I have added 4 new decorations. A custom poster, a custom sign, a GDM poster, and a GDM sign. These represent the 4 main types of decorations I plan to add. The custom posters can be placed on any wall, floor, or ceiling. Once placed you can open them up and choose a label and a directional arrow. This should help make your base easier to live in with a bit of signage. The custom sign is the same but placed outside. The GDM (Game Dev Masters) poster and sign are just art from my previous title on Steam "GDM". As part of the visual modeling update, we will add several unique decorations you can use to spruce up the walls and ground of your base, but for now, this is what is on offer.
Things Are Getting Difficult
All new difficulty settings have been added related to colonist difficulty, alien attack difficulty, and frequency. These of course work in the difficulty multiplier used to calculate leader board score.
All Supplied
The back supply boxes found in the cave with a 70% terraforming melting wall have been updated to contain some high-level parts and more. They are now a great pickup when you reach that threshold of terraforming.
Mutated Scorpion Update
The mutated scorpions (Ground Severity 3 attacks) have been changed to now target your Hydro Power Convertors. With adding a new power unit, we needed them to be targets and the scorpion was hungry.
Isn't That Special
The special materials gathered from expeditions and the firing of the missile silo can now be gained infinitely. This was added in case someone threw away a resource they would be essentially boned on that save. You can now re-clear expeditions or hand in more ballistic payloads for radioactive waste. You shouldn't need to do this, but just in case someone makes a whoops I wanted to have this covered.
Cheating Made Easy
I have updated the Admin console accessible by the beta with all the new materials and resources, but it is now moved to the options menu and is called cheats. If you choose to enable cheats then you can no longer gain achieves or post to leaderboards, but for those who just want to try something out or whatever reason you have for cheating, it is now there. This also covers the need for a creative mode with less design time on my part. It isn't creative, but you can spawn with meter loss difficulty on NONE and cheat in any items, so it is a creative mode.
What Is Next
Up next now that most of the menus and everything has been expanded and updated we will be looking to format all the HUDS for translations and begin to gather the text as well as post the first draft of translations. Once complete anyone who wishes to help with translations please feel free to reach out, I will have a document with all of the game's language ready to be translated. Thank you so much for your continued support, and I can't wait for the game to start taking shape with the visuals update starting shortly after translations.