Animal Grazing
Previously, it was possible to cram unlimited animals in a very tiny space. I think this made animal products much less interesting, because you didn't really have to think about the space they took up. This is addressed with a new feature: animal grazing.
It works like this: Pasture Tiles now spawn Grazing Grass. It grows back relatively slowly. All Animal types have a new need to consume this grass, in addition to regular food and water. They will wander around their pasture, looking for grass to eat. What this means is that if you have too many animals in a pasture, they will deplete the grass faster than it can replenish, they will become less happy, and thus produce fewer resources.
So, you will need to monitor your pastures to make sure there is enough grazing grass for your animals. Note that large animals like Dairy Cows and Beef Cows consume grass faster than smaller animals like Chickens.
To get an equilibrium, you'll need this many pasture tiles per animal: Beef Cow 6.25, Milk Cow 5, Sheep 4, Goose 2.5, Pig 1.25, Chicken 1.25. (I'll update the UI to make this more clear)
Obviously this will make it harder to gather animal products, when they were already a huge bottleneck! So a number of changes were made to balance this out:
Animals can now store multiple copies of their consumed items, just like workers
Added new Perk: Animal Productivity. Each level of this perk adds 50% to the speed that animals regenerate their products. But this is multiplicative: unhappy animals will still produce very slowly!
A worker's "Strength" stat will increase the speed at which they harvest animal products, just like how it improves natural resource harvesting
Vehicle Task Option: "Max Attempts"
There was a common problem with vehicles that happened when loading or unloading from a building that had its inventory constantly changing - it would transfer from items, the inventory would change, more transfers would occur, and so on - the vehicle would never give up because there was always more to transfer.
This is addressed with a new option on the Task Config panel: Max Attempts.
An "Attempt" is tracked as a transfer (successful or unsuccessful) to or from one of the vehicle's item slots. Each slot tracks its own transfer attempts. And the Max Attempts is enforced per slot, not globally. That means a vehicle with "Max Attempts: 1" will try 1 attempt for EACH of its item slots. After that, the vehicle will move on to its next task action or task target.
For legacy file compatibility, this is left at the default of 'off' on all existing vehicles. However, for new vehicles created after this patch, it will defaults to on (1).
Vehicle Task List Visualizations
It was hard to analyze complicated vehicle task schedules, so some improvements were made here:
When hovering or selecting a vehicle, all of its current task targets will have a detail panel showing their task index, building label, and inventory.
The line connecting a vehicle’s targets is now a smoother curve, is animated to show the direction of travel
The segment representing the current vehicle’s target (the one it’s moving towards) is highlighted brighter so you can see which one it is heading towards.
Balance Changes
Windmill recipe speed is doubled (again)
Pick Up actions now have a brief pause per source inventory slot, to match the brief unloading time added during Drop Off. However, this brief pause has been sped up for both task types.
Ice now provides 1 unit of Drink when consumed
Ice recipe now produces 2 ice instead of 1 ice
Copper Ore, Iron Ore, Silver Ore, Gold Ore, and Feather now provide 1 unit of industry so they can now function as ‘sellable’
Paint Terrain tool is now available in non-sandbox mode, and is available when you unlock Terraforming
Reduced population level requirement for unlocking island 6, to better align with the point at which workers start requiring magic items
Coins are capped at 1 billion
Misc Improvements
You can now leave Trough filter as its “Trough Items” default and assigned workers will get items that match that filter
An Item tooltip will show the recipe that produces the item, instead of just a link to the recipe
Added better highlight when highlighting or selecting pasture tile
Made Chicken smaller
Added slight shopping score for items that don’t solve a needs deficit, just so they can be prioritized if the worker decides to shop for a spare item
Pasture Barns now have a 'Linked To' panel that shows linked pastures as well as an overview of all animals in those pastures, showing those animals' inventory and happiness
More improvements to boat pathfinding, to make it more efficient and also more likely to find a target
Added Ukrainian localization
Added some missing Cyrillic characters
Improved reliability of Power Line networks
Bug Fixes
Fixed bug: clicking the icon in a Recipe row would open both the recipe select panel and the tooltip for the clicked icon. (Now it just pins the tooltip)
Salt Water no longer has a mastery tracker
Fixed bug: Workers were consuming equipment from their pocket while the currently equipped item still had some lifetime left
Got rid of obsolete ‘condition’ meter on the tooltips for equipped items
Fixed bug: notifications in bottom-right were never fading away
Fixed bug: workers would purchase - but not actually equip: Mana Shard Silver Nugget, Gold Nugget, and Gold Ingot.
Fixed bug: hitting F12 toggled the menu visibility, which interfered with default F12 function of taking a screenshot
Fixed bug: the line connecting all of a vehicle’s targets was not updating if you added or removed a target
Fixed bug: Desalinator, Mana Power Generator would not allow you to click on them when placing Power Poles to easily establish a power connection
Fixed bug: broken label for Desalinator research
Fixed bug: Move tool and Pick Up Item tool was not interacting with underground objects while in the underground view
Fixed bug: With Manual Labor modifier, buildings could get into a state where spare rotational power was available, but the current metered value was zero, causing no production to occur, thus rotational power metered value was never restored from stock. Now, metered value can be restored when checking to see if rotational power is available in the first place
Let me know if you have any feedback on these changes.
(And if you're liking the game, I'd love a review on the Steam Page!)
Cheers,
Erik