One common item of feedback we’ve received is that the events taking place on your ship seem like a random game of whack-a-mole. Their occurrence isn’t currently tied to anything in particular, and they are mostly a means of keeping you and your crew occupied between interactions, but soon that will all change!
Next week, Civilian Management will be added to your role as Captain. This new system grants you control of the Civilian City on your ship, and requires solid management in order to keep your populace content. The happier they are, the easier it will be for you to focus on actually reaching Titus Nova.
There are four components that now directly impact your Civilian population: Health, Happiness, Order and Rations. The first three are dictated by your management of events on the ship and the buildings you construct in the City. The Rations you dole out fluctuate between Low, Normal and High and affect the other components as well as the Growth Rate of your population. That’s right, babies are now born on the Ark-13 to help balance out all the lives you’ve lost along the way! (Shame on you, Captain…)
Each of the aforementioned components feeds into three states of Civilian Wellbeing: Happy, Complacent and Angry. As you move from one to another you’ll notice a significant uptick in events taking place on your ship. Each of these are now tied into Health, Happiness and Order, so you’ll want to quickly clear them up before their percentages plummet and you’re left with an Angry mob.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=520049744
But wait, you say, what of these buildings I can now construct?! Well, as any city manager will tell you, public works projects are a great way to keep the population Happy. As Captain, you’ll now oversee the construction of buildings that feed directly into Civilian well-being. There are a number of options here, each with unique costs/benefits, so tinkering with the city layout will likely be necessary during your voyage.
Obviously this is a rich feature in terms of both depth and content, so we’ll save some of the details for a future update, but we wanted to give you a taste of what’s to come. Stay tuned in the coming days for more as we near the release of our biggest patch to date!