The new update is now live on the main branch! Version 0.3.0 adds three new jobs that cooperate to produce and consume thousands of items to do scientific research. Currently, the research unlocks only basic HP upgrades. We’re working to add new jobs, blocks and items that can be unlocked with the science system.
In previous versions, survival was the only goal in the game. A lot of items and blocks existed purely for cosmetic reasons. Many of them are now part of the recipes for Science Bags. This means that your colony will have to produce a lot of these items. Now there’s a good reason to greatly expand the size and production of your colony!
We didn’t want to make survival itself a lot more complicated – this would unnecessarily hinder new players, and those who are more focused on the creative side of things. A colony will not collapse without a science system, but it does exist to let players unlock new things and to stimulate them to expand their colony.
There are other important changes in 0.3.0. The production of some items has been slowed down, another way to encourage players to grow their colonies. Flax seeds were the previous “end game content”, requiring hundreds of coins to unlock. They are a lot cheaper now. Flax is an important item in 0.3.0. It’s necessary to craft coated planks, which are part of the recipe of both the Technologist’s Table and the Science Lab. It can also be used to craft linen. Linen is an important component of bags and clothing (both required for Science Bags) and carpet blocks.
The default amount of regenerated HP has been reduced from 50 to 30. The speed of regeneration has also been lowered. Both can be boosted to higher levels than before by unlocking new technologies. Five new achievements have been added, and they’re all related to the new content.
There has been a lot of cooperation with modders in the past couple of weeks. This is reflected in significantly expanded mod support. All those improvements have now been released to the main branch. Modders have had access to these changes in the [dev] branch, and they’ve already made a lot of content that only works in 0.3.0. One of the improvements by modders is a certain level of anti-griefing protection. Some servers have gone non-public, waiting for 0.3.0 to be released so they can include proper anti-griefing measures. Now that 0.3.0 has been released, those servers will become available again!
We’ve been plagued for months by a problem that causes savegames to become corrupted on quitting. We’ve recently found the cause, and this bug is gone from 0.3.0!
We want to thank everybody for all the encouragement, the mods, the playtesting, and other support! We appreciate it immensely. We hope you’ll have a lot of fun with the new content, and we’d love to hear your feedback! You’re welcome in the Official Colony Survival Discord!