Hello Eco Citizens,

we're happy to announce the release of Update 14! Let's get our hands dirty and check out what's new:

Garbage & Recycling

Crafting Changes

In Update 14 nearly all crafting recipes now also produce byproducts (called "Garbages"), their type and amount being determined based on a configurable percentage of the salvage materials of the item being crafted. Salvage materials is a term we use to represent what you are getting back when scrapping an item in the new Recycler - usually some form of scrap that contains parts of the original resources used to craft that item. These byproducts are however not given to you as individual products, instead they will be contained in mixed garbage blocks that consist of a percentage of multiple different garbage types that you will be able to separate and convert into useful crafting materials.

With the addition of the Recycler, we also have removed all the old placeholder recipes for destroying items that you didn't need anymore. Instead, you can now simply add items that you have no more use for into a recycler and it will output mixed garbage containing the respective salvage materials.

Pollution

This Update significantly increases the impact of pollution throughout the world. While air pollution still works mostly the same as you are used to - work stations exhausting through pipes, increasing the CO2 value in the atmosphere and potentially leading to increasing temperatures, changing biomes and sea level rise -, we have separated ground pollution into four different types, namely: Acid Rain, Chemical Pollution, Soil Pollution and Heavy Mineral Pollution.

Each of these pollution sources contributes differently to the total ground pollution layer that visualizes how wide the overall impact is. Soil pollution is the least problematic and mostly recovers, as long as you remove the initial source. Chemical and Heavy Mineral pollution however has a long standing impact and needs manual sanitizing if it's left to accumulate for too long. Acid Rain is a new visualization of a mechanic you are already used to - air pollution washing out in areas with high rain fall and dropping to the ground.

Ground pollution now also spreads differently from what you were used to so far. It will not only spread significantly wider based on the total volume of pollutants at the source, but also get more devastating if it seeps into water where it can reach much farther, but also gets diluted with distance. Keeping this in mind is especially advisable when working with liquid sewage which now also comes in different types. Pollution also has more noticeable effects - it will reduce the house value of any rooms in a polluted area based on its severity, reduce and inhibit the regeneration of fish populations and make animals in polluted areas sick, which leads to them no longer yielding a carcass.

Containment

With new blocks and sources for pollution we of course also needed some new ways to store and contain them, so we have added an array of new storage options. Primitive bins and dumps are the first options at your disposal, providing sufficient storage space and a small amount of pollution reduction for the rather mild pollutants you will encounter in the early game, but you'll get access to better options with higher storage capacity and a higher amount of pollution reduction later on:

All of these storages can also be used with the new Garbage Pickup Bounty system, which - a bit similar to the repair bounties you already know - allows you to set a bounty or price for each type of garbage in a container that will be paid to or asked from anyone that wants to pick the garbage up to bring it to a containment or treatment facility. This is very useful for organized play on multiplayer servers and made straightforward with the new garbage modules for vehicles:

Note that pollutants are no longer impacted by burying them. Storing your pollutants - especially tailings - at a dump, at best as far away as possible from your fellow farmers and residences in suitable containers is vital to contain the pollution until you get access to methods to reprocess them, which will also be possible for some types of tailings. Thanks to a grace period - freshly created pollutants will only start impacting the environment after 24 hours - you will have sufficient time to take care of their disposal, even when your operations run while you are offline.

Garbage Sorting

Once you have progressed enough to have access to a garbage sorter, you can start processing mixed garbage into different partitions based on the fractions of different garbage types contained in each block of mixed garbage. Mixed garbage can stack freely - the fractions will merge and blend as necessary.

After doing that, you are ready to use the new specialized sorters to extract valuable materials from the different garbage partitions: Copper, Cellulose Fiber, Glass, Gold, Fabric, Iron, Plastic and Steel.

Decontamination

It's not possible to fully avoid pollution and natural that you will only be able to deal effectively with some kinds of pollution later in the progression. For this purpose, a new type of items - decontaminants, that are made with the Fertilizers specialty - is available that can remove pollution. Decontaminants are applied like fertilizers are and take time to take effect, similar to how pollutants take time to fully saturate an area, but will allow you to remove most pollution with enough effort. Information about the state of pollution and decontamination is both available through the map layers and the soil sampler.

Reworked Module System

Update 14 completes the transition away from the prior modules to a more simple system that instead of having multiple numbered modules of different tiers now only has exactly four module types: Basic Upgrade, Modern Upgrade, Advanced Upgrade and Specialty Upgrades that appear in different variants.

The first three upgrades provide general bonuses for work orders on the table, while Specialty Upgrades are focused around bonuses for recipes belonging to a specific specialty. Some upgrades also increase the room tier requirement of the table or add a mechanical respectively electric power requirement to it.

By default, plugging a Basic, Modern or Advanced Upgrade into a table requires you to spend a star, while Specialty Upgrades do not - you can however change this in the configs. Most tables have slots to accept one upgrade of each type that once plugged in cannot be removed anymore. The bonuses of the modules stack additively and we present them and all other necessary information in a clean UI:

Quality of Life Improvements

As promised with Update 13, a significant amount of time went into additional Quality of Life changes.

Most visible, you can now place pipes directly into blocks and will see an overlay when holding a pipe:

You now also have the ability to determine exactly which items from a tag you want to be used in a craft:

Beyond that there is tons of other improvements, here is a list of some of the most notable ones:

• There is now a dedicated singleplayer difficulty setting that grants character experience when gaining specialty experience and allows to progress through the game at a much better pace.

• Backpacks now grant additional inventory slots and the work backpack also grants a second carry slot.

• Stores now have a search bar that limits the displayed items to the entered keyword - live.

• Stores now also have a MAX button, allowing you to quickly buy as many items as you can afford or carry - whichever limit hits first.

• Just like it was already possible in stores, you can now use hotkeys for higher increments when setting up crafting orders. And in both cases it will now also show you the multiplier in front of the input field.

• The Economy Viewer has been reworked and now shows status symbols for every store that you can filter for - including one that hints at if the storage capacity is sufficient.

• Building blocks do no longer need to be deconstructed and replaced to change their shape, you can just directly change it with a single click now.

• You can now select a building shape by aiming at a block that has it and pressing the middle mouse button.

• Painting has no cooldown anymore, you can paint blocks as quickly as you can move your mouse.

• You can now enter a hexcode in the color picker instead of needing to pick from the scale.

• In the storage tab, you can now immediately bring a storage up to the top, sort all storages alphabetically, generally hide fuel storages or determine that individual storages are not displayed in other tables.

• You can now move all items from your inventory of which at least one is already contained in a storage object to that storage object at the press of a single button without needing to open the UI.

• You are no longer prevented from taking or adding items to or from a storage when you don't have calories.

• Broken parts can now be stacked when their durability is below 10%.

• Inventory slots now show a transparent icon to indicate what type of items the slot can hold.

• The chat history is no longer limited and direct messages hence will now always actually be delivered, even if you were offline when it was sent. Tabs with unread messages will now also consistently light up to make you aware of such messages.

• Dinner Parties automatically get announced and marked on the map if not turned off in the deed settings.

• You can now copy and paste settings from one table to others.

• Food items now show an indicator for their tastiness on their icon - and also when placed in the world for a dinner party.

• Civic clauses in the law editor can now be moved and also duplicated for editing.

• A number of tooltips were cleaned up to put more focus on key information.

Make sure to let us know about any other improvements you'd like to see on our feedback tracker!

Release Notes

Balance Changes:

Fishing:

• Changed: Fish is no longer infinite, all methods of fishing now consistently affect fish populations.

• Changed: Fish populations have been significantly increased to account for this change.

• Changed: The catch rate of the fishing trawler has been significantly increased.

• Changed: Cod and Bass can now be caught by fish traps.

• Changed: Crabs can now be caught by the fishing trawler.

Housing:

• Changed: Housing value of repeated instances of ponds in a room was decreased from 70 % to 30 %.

• Changed: Elk Gong now has a room and volume requirement.

• Changed: Volume requirement of all Fireplaces was increased from 12 m³ to 40 m³.

• Changed: Volume requirement of Cast Iron Bed was increased from 18 m³ to 26 m³.

• Changed: Volume requirement of Cast Iron Royal Bed was increased from 24 m³ to 32 m³.

• Changed: Volume requirement of Dressers was increased from 12 m³ to 16 m³.

• Changed: Volume requirement of Hewn Nightstand was increased from 4 m³ to 6 m³.

• Changed: Volume requirement of Nylon Futon Bed was increased from 12 m³ to 26 m³.

• Changed: Volume requirement of Toilet was increased from 6 m³ to 10 m³.

• Changed: Volume requirement of Washboard was increased from 4 m³ to 12 m³.

• Changed: Volume requirement of Washing Machine was increased from 4 m³ to 16 m³.

Items:

• Added: Carbon Filter, Electrostatic Filter, Insulated Copper Wiring, Magnet, Paraffin, Sulfuric Acid and Waxed Paper.

• Changed: Axles, Gold Wire and Radiator are now considered parts.

• Changed: Carry weight bonus of Bearpack was increased from 15 kg to 20 kg.

• Changed: Carry weight bonus of Big Backpack was increased from 10 kg to 15 kg.

• Changed: Carry weight bonus of Light Backpack was increased from 5 kg to 8 kg.

• Changed: Light Backpack now slightly decreases the available backpack slots.

• Changed: Bearpacks and Big Backpacks now grant additional backpack slots.

• Changed: Work Backpack no longer provides a movement speed bonus and instead grants additional backpack slots and an additional carry slot. It's carry weight bonus was increased from 5 kg to 8 kg.

• Changed: Pants now provide carry weight bonuses.

• Changed: Cloth Cape now grants increased movement speed and reduced calorie consumption for work orders, but also reduces the available backpack slots.

• Changed: Flax Fiber now has the Natural Fiber tag.

• Changed: Cotton Seeds now have the Crop Seed tag.

• Changed: Weight of all vehicle modules was decreased to 8 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Skid Steer was increased from 25 kg to 30 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Epoxy was decreased from 1 kg to 0,75 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Ethanol was decreased from 1 kg to 750.

• Changed: Weight of Fiberglass was decreased from 1 kg to 0,6 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Lubricant was decreased from 1 kg to 0,8 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Nails was decreased from 0,1 kg to 0,02 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Rebar was decreased from 3 kg to 0,8 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Rivets was decreased from 2 kgto 0,5 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Screws was decreased from 0,5 kg to 0,25 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Steel Spring was decreased from 2 kg to 0,8 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Substrate was decreased from 1 kg to 0,7 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Agouti, Crab and Snapping Turtle Carcass was decreased from 2 kg to 1 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Bighorn Sheep Carcass was decreased from 3,5 kg to 3 kg.

• Changed: Weight of Jaguar and Wolf Carcass was increased from 2 kg to 3 kg.

Research:

• Added: Agriculture Research Paper Basic.

• Changed: Reworked research progression across all disciplines. Advanced and modern research papers now consistently require the previous tier of research paper, creating a more structured progression path.

• Changed: Adjusted labor and material costs as well as profession requirements across nearly all research papers.

• Changed: Adjusted labor cost as well as research and progression requirements across nearly all skill books. Several books received craft time and cost reductions while others have been rebalanced to better match profession progression.

Recipes:

• Added: Synthetic Phosphate Fertilizer recipe.

• Changed: Recipes of all vehicle modules were adjusted.

• Changed: Craft times of all recipes related to Campfire Cooking was decreased significantly.

• Changed: Craft times of all recipes on early mining machines was decreased significantly.

• Changed: Cost of Gold Bar for Gold Wiring recipe was decreased from 4 to 2.

• Changed: Cost of Iron Bar for Steam Engine recipe was decreased from 24 to 16.

• Changed: Cost of Natural Fiber for Cellulose Fiber recipe was decreased from 20 to 12.

• Changed: Cost of Fiber for Paper Cellulose recipe was increased from 2 to 4.

• Changed: Cost of Petroleum for Epoxy recipe was decreased from 4 to 3.

• Changed: Cost of Petroleum for Lubricant recipe was decreased from 4 to 3.

• Changed: Cost of Petroleum for Nylon recipe was decreased from 4 to 3.

• Changed: Cost of Petroleum for Plastic recipe was decreased from 4 to 3.

• Changed: Cost of Petroleum for Synthetic Rubber recipe was decreased from 4 to 3.

• Changed: Cost of Steel Bar for Corrugated Steel recipe was decreased from 3 to 2.

• Changed: Fuel value of Paper was decreased from 100 to 30.

• Changed: Ingredient Rivet was removed from the Combustion Engine recipe.

• Changed: Ingredient Iron Bar was removed from the Machinist Table recipe.

• Changed: Ingredient Iron Plate (12) was added to the Machinist Table recipe.

• Changed: Ingredient Insulated Copper Wiring was added to Advanced Circuit and Blasting Cap recipes.

• Changed: Ingredient Copper Wiring (20) in the Industrial Elevator recipe was replaced with Insulated Copper Wiring (15).

• Changed: Ingredient Boiler was added to Steam Engine recipe.

• Changed: Ingredient Hewn Logs was removed from Wooden Hull Planks recipe

• Changed: Ingredient Plant Fibers (4) and Wood (2) was added to Wooden Hull Planks recipe.

• Changed: Yield of Cellulose Fiber recipe was increased from 2 to 4.

• Changed: Yield of Copper Wiring recipe was increased from 2 to 12.

• Changed: Yield of Corrugated Steel recipe was increased from 4 to 6.

• Changed: Yield of Gold Flakes recipe was increased from 4 to 8.

• Changed: Yield of Gold Wiring recipe was increased from 2 to 4.

• Changed: Yield of Epoxy recipe was increased from 2 to 8.

• Changed: Yield of Lubricant recipe was increased from 2 to 8.

• Changed: Yield of Melting Fat recipe was increased from 1 to 5.

• Changed: Yield of Nylon recipe was increased from 2 to 4.

• Changed: Yield of Paper recipe was increased from 8 to 12.

• Changed: Yield of Plastic recipe was increased from 2 to 8.

• Changed: Yield of Render Fat recipe was increased from 1 to 5.

• Changed: Yield of Rebar recipe was increased from 1 to 6.

• Changed: Yield of Synthetic Rubber recipe was increased from 2 to 6.

• Changed: Yield of Gold Bar recipe was decreased from 4 to 1.

• Changed: Yield of Smelt Gold Bar recipe was decreased from 6 to 3.

• Changed: Copper and Iron Plates are now craftd through Blacksmithing at the Anvil.

• Changed: Copper Wires are now crafted at the Screw Press.

• Changed: Camo Clothing no longer has Cellulose Fiber as an ingredient.

• Changed: Cellulose Fiber recipe was moved to Small Paper Machine and now requires Paper Milling labor.

• Changed: Wooden Elevator recipe now requires Basic Engineering labor and Iron Bars as ingredient.

• Removed: Crushed Stone Road and Incinerate Garbage recipe.

Talents:

• Changed: The carry weight bonus of the Deeper Pockets talent was increased from 5 kg to 10 kg.

• Changed: The calorie capacity bonus of the Glutton talent was increased from 1000 to 2000.

• Fixed: The final level of the Precision Tooling talent didn't apply additional bonuses.

World Objects:

• Added: Primitive Bin with 4 slots, a stack size of 10 and a 20% reduction in emitted pollution.

• Added: Primitive Dump with 12 slots, a stack size of 10 and no reduction in emitted pollution.

• Added: Steel Bin with 8 slots, a stack size of 10 and a 40% reduction in emitted pollution.

• Added: Modern Bin with 8 slots, a stack size of 10 and a 60% reduction in emitted pollution.

• Added: Wooden Dumpster with 30 slots, a stack size of 12 and a 30% reduction in emitted pollution.

• Added: Dumpster with 30 slots, a stack size of 12 and a 90% reduction in emitted pollution.

• Added: Desalinator, Incinerator and Water Tanks.

• Added: Biowaste Sorter, Construction Scrap Sorter, Garbage Sorter, Industrial Waste Sorter, Metal Scrap Sorter and Residual Waste Sorter.

• Changed: Mechanical power consumption of the Lathe, Screw Press and Shaper was reduced from 250 W to 80 W each.

• Changed: Arrastra, Stamp Mill and Jaw Crusher no longer accept upgrade modules.

• Changed: Shapers no longer require a Screw Press to be present.

• Changed: Maintenance Requirement of Small Paper Machine was changed from Iron Gear to Lubricant.

• Changed: Tier requirement of Lathe, Machinist Table, Lathe and Small Paper Machine was decreased from 2,8 to 1,8.

Miscellaneous:

• Changed: Access range radius for Stores increased from 15 to 20.

• Changed: Access range radius for Lumber Stockpiles and Large Lumber Stockpiles increased from 12 to 16.

• Changed: Access range radius for all other storages increased from 7 to 9.

• Changed: Explosion by default can now destroy blocks and world objects.

• Changed: Pipes no longer have a room tier.

• Changed: Steam Truck and Truck are now modular vehicles with a Flat Bed and a Garbage module.

• Changed: Shelf life of all flowers was increased from 48 h to 72 h.

• Changed: Wolf Carcasses are now medium instead of small carcasses.

Server & Configs:

• MIGRATION NOTICE: Migration between major versions is generally not supported. The game will however load worlds from Update 13 fine, remove all modules from tables, convert them to their new versions and put them into the void storage for reapplication at the configured star cost. Due to the changes in this Update, there is some additional matters to pay attention to: - Machines that were operated using water from an ocean will stop working until a desalinator is installed, as the ocean now contains salt walter that is not suitable for usage in crafting operations. - Pipes no longer have a room tier, hence any rooms made out of or containing pipes will require the pipes to be replaced with building blocks before they count as a valid room again. - Pollutants can no longer be contained safely by storing them deep underground, any storages of pollutants will start to quickly pollute the surrounding area if not treated - on default settings this can significantly reduce the housing score of residences located within the polluted area.

• MOD COMPATIBILITY NOTICE: Modifications and Overrides need to be adjusted or removed. The new garbage and module systems come with changes to most game files, hence most if not at all overrides will need small adjustments to account for these changes. Servers will fail to boot until these adjustments have been made, unless respective overrides are removed. Compiled mods that do not add recipes or have features related to the module system will likely allow the server to boot, but may cause failures in usage when not having been recompiled against the new Update.

Balance.eco.template

• Added: "CraftGarbageRatio" config variable, determining the percentage of the salvage materials of an item to be added as byproducts to its crafting recipe - defaults to 0.08, equalling 8%.

• Added: "BasicModuleStarCost" config variable, determining how many stars it costs to apply a basic module to a worktable - defaults to 1.

• Added: "ModernModuleStarCost" config variable, determining how many stars it costs to apply a modern module to a worktable - defaults to 1.

• Added: "AdvancedModuleStarCost" config variable, determining how many stars it costs to apply an advanced module to a worktable - defaults to 1.

• Added: "SpecialtyModuleStarCost" config variable, determining how many stars it costs to apply a specialty module to a worktable - defaults to 0.

EcoSim.eco.template

• Added: "BufferPollutionConvergenceDays" config variable, determining the amount of days it takes for a pollution in an area to reach the maximum pollution value based on the source pollutants - defaults to 3.0.

• Added: "GroundPollutionGraceDays" config variable, determining after how many days a freshly produced pollutant will start to pollute the ground - defaults to 1.0.

• Added: "HeavyMineralNaturalDecayCeiling" config variable, determining at which pollution value heavy mineral pollution on a claim will no longer decay by itself and require decontaminants to be reduced - defaults to 1.0.

• Added: "ChemicalNaturalDecayCeiling" config variable, determining at which pollution value chemical pollution on a claim will no longer decay by itself and require decontaminants to be reduced - defaults to 0.3.

• Added: "GroundPollutionSoilRatio" config variable, determining as a multiplier how much soil pollution contributes to the total ground pollution - defaults to 1.0.

• Added: "GroundPollutionHeavyMineralRatio" config variable, determining as a multiplier how much heavy mineral pollution contributes to the total ground pollution - defaults to 1.0.

• Added: "GroundPollutionChemicalRatio" config variable, determining as a multiplier how much heavy mineral pollution contributes to the total ground pollution - defaults to 1.0.

• Added: "GroundPollutionAcidRainRatio" config variable, determining as a multiplier how much acid rain pollution contributes to the total ground pollution - defaults to 1.0.

• Removed: "PollutionPerTailingPerTick" config variable was removed as it is now obsolete.

• Removed: "TailingsPollutionUndergroundHalvingDistance" config variable was removed as it is now obsolete.

• Removed: The world layer entries with the IDs 19, 21, 22 and 23 were removed from the "Eco.Simulation.WorldLayers.IWorldLayerInteraction" section, as they are now obsolete.

Features.eco.template

• Added: "ExplosionCanDestroyWorldObjects" config variable, determining if world objects can be destroyed by explosions - defaults to true.

• Added: "ExplosionCanDestroyConstructedBlocks" config variable, determining if constructed blocks can be destroyed by explosions - defaults to true.

Performance.template.eco

• Added: "ServerGC" config variable, determining if the performance of garbage collection should be improved by multi-core utilization at the cost of higher memory usage - defaults to false. This setting being active may cause serious issues when more than one Eco server instance is running on the same dedicated machine without an abstraction layer.

• Added: "BoostThreadPool" config variable, determining if the minimum thread pool size should be increased to avoid throttling while the pool grows, leading to improved performance - defaults to false. This setting being active may cause serious issues when more than one Eco server instance is running on the same dedicated machine without an abstraction layer.

Rooms.template.eco

• Changed: "PollutionValueWherePenaltyStarts" config variable now defaults to "0.0".

• Changed: "PollutionValueWherePenaltyStopsIncreasing" config variable now defaults to "1.0", which due to changes to how the pollution layers work is also the new maximum value.

• Changed: "MaxPenaltyPercent" config variable now defaults to "1.0".

Settlements.template.eco

• Added: MaxDinnerPartiesPerDayPerClaim" config variable, determining how many dinner parties can be hosted on a specific deed per day - defaults to "0", equalling unlimited.

• Added: "MaxDinnerPartiesPerDayPerSettlement" config variable, determining how many dinner parties can be hosted in a specific settlement per day - defaults to "0", equalling unlimited.

• Added: "MaxDinnerPartiesPerDayPerPlayer" config variable, determining how many dinner parties can be hosted by a specific player per day - defaults to "0", equalling unlimited.

SpeciesLayeredCatch.template.eco

• Added: The entries BlueShark, MoonJellyfish, Alligator and Crab were added to the TargetLayers section of the CatcherType "Eco.Mods.Organisms.SpeciesCatchers.BoatCatcher, Eco.Mods".

Outlook

As per usual, we'll now be monitoring the impacts of this Update for a while, fixing bugs that come up and make necessary adjustments as part of the post-release support through hotfixes and maintenance updates. Once Update 14 has settled a bit, we'll move our full focus to the next Update, which will bring Animal Husbandry to the game. We know a lot of you have been waiting for that and we are excited to share more information about it soon - for now, here is another teaser:

We hope that you will enjoy this Update and that it will provide you with some real challenge that lives up to the name of Eco. Thanks for reading, your support and to everyone participating in the playtest!

- Strange Loop Games