Hi everyone!
I hope your New Year 2026 is off to a flying start!
I thought I'd release a small patch for Hydro to address some recent concerns/feedback as well as drop a few quality of life updates as well. All is revealed below...
Oil consumption has been REDUCED by 25% across the board! This means both the stock gear oil pump and the upgraded gear oil pump will enjoy 25% less oil consumption (all min/max values for both upgrade states were changed). This means you'll have better chances of seeing the day through with just one oil can and in my testing, even the higher unit Township Demands (75-80 units) should be achievable on a single oil can refill (provided your Grid Power Insulators are not too dirty, causing you to continually re-sync to the grid and losing time). Needless to say, an upgraded oil pump will now enjoy a much better runtime between oil refills.
Related to oil consumption, when refilling oil from an oil can, previously an oil can could provide as little as 75% oil. Now ALL oil cans will provide a MINIMUM of 95% oil refill.
Sun speed has been reduced by 10% for both 'Daylight Savings' ON/OFF (meaning the sun moves more slowly across the sky). This is more a cosmetic change than anything (no changes were made to Fatigue rates), but it should help give the impression that the days are a bit longer and slow that sun down a little...
Increased the bounding box interact detection for the Hand Oiler, so you shouldn't have to get ultra-close to it anymore before you can pick it up.
In tutorial no. 11 (the Fuses and Sensors tutorial), I increased the bounding box for the main building area so the tutorial pop-up doesn't 'flash' in and out of view when the player is in the building doorway area (purely cosmetic).
All pickup items (such as the bucket, spare fuses, oil cans, etc) will no longer inherit oil stain textures if they are dropped over an oil stain.
Thanks again for your ongoing support and feedback. I hope this small patch makes Hydro more enjoyable :)
As always, I welcome your ongoing feedback and comments on these changes and other things in the game. My aim is to make Hydro the best it can be.
Until next time, happy generating! ⚡