Hi everyone, 😄
Thank you very much for all the feedback, questions, and reports you’ve been sharing with us. In this update, we are improving and fixing several core systems that the community has frequently asked us. While part of the team is actively working on optimization improvements, we are also delivering important quality of life updates and refinements to existing systems.
Improvements
1. Machine Information Improvements
Based on common questions and recurring issues from the community around machine clarity and maintenance behavior, we added new information and controls:
Maintenance Threshold Control We added a new setting that lets you control when a Production Assistant should start doing maintenance and when the machine should show a warning state.
The threshold works from a maximum of 90% down to 0%.
For example, if you set the threshold to 80%, then once the machine condition is below or equal to 80%, the employee will perform maintenance on that machine.
The default maintenance threshold is 25%.
Speed Control Information and Machine Condition Explanation
We added clearer information to the speed control UI explaining that higher speeds will reduce machine condition faster.A new gear icon has been added as a symbol for machine condition.
Machine condition reduction is calculated based on the number of commodities processed while the machine is running at a specific speed level.
Faster speed means faster condition decay, so speed decisions now come with clearer tradeoffs.
2. Project Menu Improvements
We received requests for an easier way to check current stock without having to physically walk to Cold Storage. To support faster decision making when choosing projects:
The Project Menu now has a new button that displays your Cold Storage stock directly inside the menu.
This allows you to quickly compare available inventory and pick a project that matches what you currently have.
The same sorting options and display modes from the Cold Storage display are also available in this Project Menu view.
Bug Fixes
Potential fix for an issue where employees could get stuck when trying to take a box from the Box Packer Machine if the box was not full. This mostly affected non-product boxes targeted for Supply Racks or Starter Machines.
Fixed a bug where packaged products were incorrectly sent to the failed output when the Splitter Machine was set to Any Commodity.
Fixed an issue where players could click the Task Priority area in the Employee Menu and open settings even when no employee had been hired.
Fixed a case where supply box size selection carried over into a New Game, allowing Medium and Large box sizes to be accessed during early tutorial progression when they should still be locked.
Fixed a case where pallets could appear even if the Forklift unlock had not been purchased. This could be triggered by loading a save after owning the Hand Forklift. Pallets should only be available after purchasing the Forklift upgrade in the Vehicle menu. This also fixes incorrect vehicle counts recorded in the Vehicle menu.
Fixed several descriptions and UI information that were not translated correctly in certain languages.
Optimization Progress
As an additional update, we want to share the current progress of the optimization work in development. We are currently tackling two main performance problems and here is the status of each:
1. Render Optimization
There is a condition where performance can drop heavily when players have many machines and many objects visible in production lines, especially when items become stuck inside a machine. This can result in very low FPS.
We are actively improving this case and the current results are already showing good progress.
Internal testing so far shows an improvement of around 20% to 30% FPS when this optimization is applied.
We are not shipping it in this update yet because it is still in internal testing and needs more validation before release.
2. Save/Load Time and Save File Size Optimization
For players with deep progression and large inventory stock, save file sizes can grow too large. This makes saving and loading very slow, and also impacts day transitions due to autosave.
Current optimization progress shows the save file size can be reduced by 70% to 80%, which significantly improves load and save speed.
This optimization is also still in internal testing, and we hope it will be ready to ship next week if validation goes smoothly.
Once again, thank you very much for continuing to share feedback and reports. We are still tracking everything and prioritizing improvements based on feasibility and impact, while continuing work on performance optimization in parallel.
If you encounter any issues, please report them through the in game Bug Report Menu and/or the Steam Discussions so we can review the details and reproduce the case.
See you in the next update! 🥗🚚