Trading Posts

This is a new building type that lets you export items you have produced and exchange them for imports. It's a great way to supply smaller settlements on new islands without having to set up lots of manual shipping routes.

Since you can import items you're not producing yet or haven't unlocked, you can use them to get further into the tech tree than you normally would! This also can help satisfy villager needs in case you haven't fully built out the relevant supply chains yet.

Here's how they work:

• They are unlocked after earning 9 Volcano Power Stars, so you need to do a little expansion on your own first.

• Select a list of imports and exports at each trading post

• An NPC trading ship will visit at regular intervals and perform the exchange

• Each item has a value in "Trading Credits", so better items are more valuable to export and also more expensive to import.

• Trading credits accrue within each individual trading post - so your exchanges happen 'within a building' and not globally.

• Items are divided into 'Tiers' based on how far up the tech tree they are.

• Higher-tier items require a Trading Post upgrade in order to import.

• Trading post upgrades are also locked behind further quests to earn Volcano Power Stars, so you can't skip directly to end-game items.

• Extremely valuable items like knowledge tomes can not be imported. (That would remove too much of the fun)

• So basically: export stuff you're already producing, import stuff you need, and you can save yourself a lot of transport logistics setup!

New Features

• Double-click on a path to extend the selection to include logically connected paths, or select a path and choose the ‘Grow Selection’ button.

• Once a path segment has been selected, you can delete it, or convert it to a different path type (see the "Misc" menu for the selected path). The existing path will be refunded, and the new cost will be subtracted, as if you had built it all by hand.

• Added Grow Selection to buildings, to select multiple nearby buildings of the same type. Press repeatedly to keep growing the selection.

• When multiple buildings of the same type are selected, you can perform upgrades on all buildings at once. The upgrade button will reflect the lowest level of upgrade possible on any selected buildings, and the price will reflect how many upgrades will be applied when you click the button.

• Added search function on minimap panel, so you can search for resource clusters or item production. Icons appear on the minimap based on your search, and you can click on the icon to go to that entity:

• Added new Super Power: Place Minerals. This allows you to place mineral resources (stone and ores) as long as you have achieved mastery level 1 in that resource.

• Volcanoes now have an attribute of 'boosted resources'. This means they can link with certain resources to greatly speed up their regeneration. Mineral regeneration is now much much lower UNLESS they are linked with a volcano.

• By default, volcanoes are linked with the minerals that spawn on their island - so that means there should not be any noticeable change to your current mineral regeneration rates. But it does mean if you use Place Minerals on islands where the ores didn't naturally spawn, their regeneration rates will be much lower.

Balance Changes

• One worker at each cultivation building will lean more towards cultivation, otherwise workers may all harvest and then nearby (more convenient) resources are not cultivated, resulting in longer trips.

• Reduced mastery bonus (to coin value and volcano XP) from 30% per level to 20% per level of mastery, as they were getting a bit out of hand at high levels

• Increased rate of main volcano XP requirement gain per level

• Greatly reduced coin / xp value for items later in the tech tree chain - the value of inputs no longer accumulates so strongly in their successive outputs

• Added new control to toggle ‘flat height’ mode when building, to provide an option for controller players

• Raised pasture tile cost from 10 coins per tile to 100 coins per tile

• Raised Level 1 of Processing Productivity cost from 5000 coins to 10000 coins

• Reduced Volcano Power Star requirement for Island Expansion Token 4 to 9, down from 10

• Electric Desalination recipe is now has twice the output as before (inputs and outputs scaled down by 50%, but speed of recipe increased 4x, so result is 2x)

Misc Improvements

• “You have workers without jobs” notification no longer appears after reaching population level 3

• When you activate the minimap, it will stay ‘pinned’ on the screen until you close it. However it does not block interaction with the main world view. 

• Made vehicles better at preferring foot paths and roads even if they have to go a little out of their way

• Selecting a train now shows inventory for all train cars attached

• Can choose "One slot per item" on a train, and train cars will apply the same logic that storage buildings can: default to not filling up empty slots if there is already an item slot designated for a certain item type. Basically, makes it much easier to have a train pull multiple unique items without having to set up tons of item slots.

• Removed misleading highlight around houses when placing markets

• Buildings placed on the ocean get display-only wooden pillars to support it

• Added new admin commands “modifier add X” and “modifier remove X” where X is the name of one of these game modifiers: NoFoundations, HighStandards, NoDroughts, BuildingsRequireWorkers and DifficultRecipes. It enables or disables these modifiers mid-game.

• Text search on Recipe Book panel will now return results where the category matches (e.g. “Fruit Juices”)

• When dragging a pipe path underground, and your cursor does not terminate at a building or other connection, the path planner will not automatically try to create a vertical connection up to the surface. Similarly, dragging a pipe path above-ground will not automatically attempt to terminate at the terrain where you are highlighting by building a vertical downward pipe

• Clicking a volcano power star on the background panel will open the quests panel to the Power Stars tab on the quests panel

• Better navigation within the Island Expansion select panel when using controller

• When in underground / pipe builder mode, path structures like belts and rails are visible again (a bit greyed out still) to make it obvious when your above-ground pipe path hits an obstruction.

• Improvements to pipe path planner: it won’t terminate early at a building just because the building is in the way of part of the planner path, and if the end point is ambiguous between two buildings, it will prefer the building that is in the straight ahead path over one that is off to the side. (previously it would just not provide any automatic connector)

• Changed tint on copper ore from white to a more copper color

• Pick Up / Drop Off selection on Task Config panel is now side-by-side button choice, instead of a drop-down, meaning it takes 1 click instead of 2

• Hovering or selecting a building will show icons over all vehicles that interact with that building, showing which items they are moving

• On mouse/keyboard, opening the Inventory panel jumps the cursor to the text search box so you can just start typing to begin filtering (just like on the Build menu)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug: connectors were not pasting properties correctly

• Fixed bug: catapults could fill up stockpiles without limit if they had an additional item slot that was viable

• Fixed bug: placing rail cars was not costing resources, but they were refundable

• Resources can’t be placed in the ocean

• Fixed bug: some cultivation buildings were not having their AoE highlighted when placing linkable resources

• Fixed bug: using arrow keys to navigate the world at lower framerates could cause the camera to jump around rapidly

• Fixed bug: claiming a quest from the pop-up Quest panel would close the panel

• Fixed bug: controller was having difficulty navigating down from the Worker Assignment section on a building

• Fixed bug: selecting the Delete Block button with the controller would immediately delete whatever the cursor was on

• Fixed bug: when dragging paths, end points would sometimes try to clamp to the bottom of a perpendicular slope instead of the top, causing the default path position to be invalid

• Fixed bug: on controller / Steam Deck, the controller was not reliably navigating into the terrain purchase panel.

• Fixed mini volcano upgrade tooltips not showing the volcano level requirement when using controller

• Fixed bug: trough was not selectable (and therefore couldn’t be deleted) if it wasn’t on flat terrain

• Fixed bug: was not able to rotate trains while moving them, and fixed general issues with train navigation after rotation

• Got rid of duplicative ‘delete’ tab on rail cars

• Fixed bug: sometimes making edits on vehicles’ Task config panel would modify the wrong task

Enjoy!

Erik

Dev page + other games: https://store.steampowered.com/developer/82apps

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