I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season, and maybe even spent a bit of time playing the new Puffin Planes AI update. I'm glad to have received almost entirely positive feedback regarding the AI update. I think that AI competitors was the biggest low hanging fruit for this game and I hope that it marked a major step forward towards becoming more like That One Other Game That Released In The 90s That Everyone Compares This Game to™.
But I'm not done yet! For the past couple of weeks I have been prototyping a new update to the game, one that will change something that's, well, in the name...planes!
I was hoping to get a preview update out this week but holding both a full time desk job and then coming home to work on Puffin Planes has left me with some major neck pain, so I will taking a lot of rest to make sure I do not injure myself. But I still have some cool stuff to show you all!
First I will talk about the new plane model research mechanic! Manufacturers will now occasionally release new versions, or blocks, of the plane models that they produce. You will be able to spend Puffin Tokens to influence their research direction. In the above image, you can see that if you invest in 'Engine Research' then the next block of the Veteran has a high likelihood of improved speed and fuel efficiency.
And of course I'm very excited to introduce the new plane ordering mechanic. You now need to compete with other airlines in order to order planes from your favorite manufacturers. You will be able to enter into the waitlist, or jump the queue by paying extra to enter the priority queue. You can also increase or sabotage the efficiency of each production line, which could be useful if your biggest rival relies on a different plane model than you do.
Production lines will produce a specific block of a given model, and you will need to upgrade the production line to produce a more advanced block if you want the latest and greatest features. As you can probably imagine, you will end up with a lot more different planes in your inventory and you will need better tools to manage all the different models and subvariants you accumulate. So this is a special opportunity for me to add many features that help you manage your fleet automatically, such as by upgrading older planes (a very popular feature request).
I am excited by these gameplay changes as they make a lot of more complex features possible in the future (either in the next update or even later down the line). For instance, airplane models may go out of production and you may need to spend extra money to buy your favorite models on the used market.
Well, that's all I got for today. Have a nice day y'all!