Last week, we shared detailed plans for the new happiness system. It contained a bunch of mockups and spreadsheets, but it was all hypothetical and not in-game. Today, we can show you the first "true" images of the emerging new feature, made in the internal dev build.
It's very primitive, but it's the new upgrade menu. And it actually works! Distributed meals and happiness items result in "Colony Points", and these points can be spent on the upgrades in the list. Each upgrade has a whole range of "levels" which you'll have to unlock step by step. The four upgrades in the list actually do what they're supposed to do, and we're planning to add other upgrades.
The game already keeps in mind the upgrade from 0.7.5-colonies to 0.8.0-colonies. It will automatically unlock the colonist limit to the level required to satisfy your 0.7.5-colonists, and the banner range will adjust to the previously unlocked science as well.
Spending your colony points works, albeit in a very primitive menu. Earning your colony points is also functional, but the menu is literally empty. All the previous content has been removed, and nothing new has been built yet. We're looking forward to rebuilding it!
Last but not least, there has been another overhaul as well. Instead of different food items, each with different amounts of calories, which have to be adjusted by the player to reach 2000+ calories, we're now moving to a system of "meals". Colonists require a set amount of meals per day. Individual food items are not edible anymore, they can only be combined to make "meals". Recruiting new colonists now also costs "meals" instead of calories. This change is reflected in the recruitment part of the menu.
We're making steady progress, and hope this overhaul will make the game simultaneously more accessible and deeper. If everything goes well, will be able to release the update before it's December!
Bedankt voor het lezen!