FluxWerks v0.5.0 - 29-08-2026
New Features
Saves - Saves from before v0.5.0 will not load. To continue an old game, install the v0.4 branch from the Steam Betas tab.
The Log - A new panel that gathers your mission orders, world events, recovered records and survey progress in one place. Open it with L.
Events - Encountering some things or specific events happening, writes a short entry in the Log.
Records - Recoverable fragments scattered around ruins and other landmarks. Click one in the world to file it in the Log.
Discoveries - A Log tab charting what you have found. Every species you analyze with its growing stats, and every biome you reach with its signature resources and wear rates.
Planetary Survey - Encode science packs onto data disks, then transmit the disks through the new Uplink building. Reaching the target finishes the game, and you can keep playing afterwards.
Unknown Research - Some technologies show as unknown on the tech tree until you unlock them via specific events.
Harvester - A new building whose nanobots gather plants and trees in a 60x60 square around it. Unlocked with the Cultivation research.
Planter - A new building whose nanobots plant the selected species on prepared dirt, in a 30x30 square that tiles a quarter of the Harvester's. It waters dry ground from its tank, and is unlocked with the Cultivation research.
Growing Plants - Planted flora grow from sprouts to full size, faster on fertile ground, slower in polluted air, and dying if conditions turn too poor. Green plants need open sky, Mushrooms need cover.
Species Analysis - Harvesting a species several times unlocks it for planting and reveals its growth time and yields.
Seeds and Spores - New planting stock, dropped when you harvest flora and Mushrooms. Seed yields vary by species, not every tree replaces its own, and spare seeds grind into Biomass at the Crusher.
Mushroom Cultivation - The Planter grows Mushrooms from Spores and Xenoplasm once Xenoplasm Synthesis is researched.
Biomass - Farm waste from cacti and bushes that burns as a poor fuel.
Fertilizer - Made from Biomass and Sulfur in the Chemical Plant. A stocked Planter grows its plants faster while it lasts.
Sunflower - A new crop that yields Plant Oil, a fluid the Chemical Plant refines into crude oil. Grows in warm, damp patches across grassland and jungle, and needs the Chemistry research to refine.
Coal from Wood - A new Foundry recipe, unlocked with the Cultivation research.
Deep Veins - Rare resource deposits embedded in the bedrock. The Deep Extraction research reveals them on the scanner.
Deep Vein Extractor - A new machine that sits on a deep vein and produces its resource forever. Unlocked by the Deep Extraction research.
Deep Vein Yield - New repeatable research with no level cap. Each level adds 10% to Deep Vein Extractor output.
Production Planner - Pick an item and a rate to see the whole production chain, every machine, how many of each, and the raw resources it needs. Open it with the Planner button on the build bar, or press J.
Air Scrubber - A new machine that cleans pollution out of the air around it. It consumes water and coal while working, and the captured sulfur comes out as sulfuric acid.
New POIs - New landmarks to find across the world, several of them holding Records.
World Readouts - Volcanoes and other notable sites show a small status panel in the world, like an eruption countdown, once the matching research is done.
Fertility Map Layer - The map can now show how fertile the land is, based on moisture and temperature.
Difficulty Settings - Choose how machine maintenance behaves (Off, Biome Only, Dynamic) and turn Xenoblooms off. Found on the New Game screen and in the pause menu, and changeable mid-game.
Upscaling - Renders the world at a lower resolution and upscales it to your screen for higher frame rates. STP at 67% is now the default, with FSR 1.0, other resolutions and a full-resolution Native option in Settings under Graphics.
World Settings - Choose how your world generates. Click World Settings on the New Game screen to change the parameters as you like before starting the game.
Badlands - A new dry, rocky biome that forms between grasslands and deserts, home to the mesa country and the only place gold ore is found.
Emissive Lighting - Glowing machines, ore, plants and lava now cast light on their surroundings.
Extra Shadows - The player light now casts shadows and no longer shines through terrain. Switch it off in Settings under Graphics for better performance.
Cloud Storage - A new building that stores one item type and lets construction and terrain filling anywhere spend its stock.
Cloud Storage Panel - View every store and move items to or from your inventory from anywhere with K, or with the cloud button in the player inventory header. Demolition refunds and overflow flow into stores automatically.
Stacked Notifications - Notifications of the same kind now stack into one card showing how many more it holds. Next steps through them one by one, the corner button clears the whole stack, and Locate jumps the map to each in turn.
Storage Alerts - Storage buildings can be set to alert you when they run low or fill up, at a level you pick. Click the alert button in the building's inspector header.
Upgrades - Buildings with a next tier now upgrade to it in place, keeping contents and settings. Click Upgrade in the inspector or on an Area Select box.
Belt Upgrades - A belt's inspector now offers Upgrade Segment and Upgrade Connected Line, raising the belts, routers and elevators in the line one tier as you can afford them.
Demolish Line - A belt's inspector can now demolish its whole straight run, taking the elevators that carry it and any pass-through router with it.
Solar Panel MK 2 - A wide solar array that makes twice the power per tile of ground as the MK 1, and loses less output to pollution.
Assembler MK 2 - Crafts twice as fast as the MK 1. Unlocked by the Assembly II research.
Research Terminal MK 2 - Runs research cycles twice as fast and needs twice the computing. Unlocked by the Automated Research II research.
Computer MK 2 - Provides twice the computing of the MK 1, drawing more power and coolant. Unlocked by the Computing II research.
Boiler MK 2 and Steam Turbine MK 2 - A hotter steam pair that makes four times the power per building and wastes less fuel. Unlocked by the Power Generation III research.
Mining Drill, Excavator and Fluid Extractor MK 2 - Extract twice as fast over much larger areas.
Improvements
Settings - A Reset All Settings button restores every setting to its default.
Pollution Statistics - The Pollution tab now shows the cleaning rate beside emissions, and the Buildings tab's Pollution view gains a Cleaners column.
Weather Forecast - The top bar weather display is now a colored timeline showing the current and upcoming weather sliding by.
Machine Maintenance - Machines only wear in bad weather or hostile biomes, and most no longer wear at all. Solar panels, wind turbines and batteries always do.
Map Preview - The New Game map preview can zoom between 1 km, 4 km and 16 km views.
Biomes - Reworked into eight climate regions with smoother borders and no east to west bands.
Mountains and Forests - No longer separate biomes. Rocky peaks, dense woodland and beaches now form naturally inside any climate.
Mountains - Mountains now rise in long ranges with crests, saddles and valleys instead of round domes.
Ore Deposits - Reworked into smaller, denser bodies.
Oil Deposits - Oil pockets now also form under the badlands.
Bushes - New dry bushes spawn on the badlands and dry fringes, while leafy bushes now keep to damper grassland.
Wiki - Mechanics pages now sit under category labels, new pages cover the map, pins and farming, and resource pages list where deposits form.
Tutorial - New steps added and general improvements done.
Tutorial Panel - Step text that runs past the panel now fades at the edge, with an arrow you can click to scroll on.
Scanner - Range options are now 128 and 256 instead of 64 and 128, with 256 the default.
Ore Highlight - While placing an extractor, the scanned ore its area will reach lights up and the rest of the deposit dims.
Auto-Route - Belts and pipes now slope over and under obstacles by default. Hold Ctrl for a straight line, or switch it off in Settings under Construction.
Auto-Route Elevators - Belt auto-route now builds elevators by itself where the climb is too steep to ramp.
Seagrass - Underwater plants are now blocky swaying strands instead of flat ribbons.
Birds - Distant circling birds now have bodies and folding wings instead of flat flapping shapes.
Trees - No longer shed leaves in strong wind.
Settings Menus - Settings and Display & Graphics now group into labelled boxes across three columns, with explanations on hover.
Graphics Settings - The frame rate and GPU time show in the header as you change a setting.
Resource Readouts - Drill, excavator and pump readouts now show the total amount of each resource instead of a count of blocks. Both while placing and once built.
Harvest Tool - Now clears Xenomass from the ground as well as harvesting plants and trees, by click or by area. No other ground is touched.
Map - Escape now closes the fullscreen map. The small and medium windows stay put.
Notifications - Map, statistics and log links on alerts are now buttons, with the coordinates shown beside them.
Map Pins - Locate now only shows the spot. Shift-click also drops a beacon pin, Ctrl-click a quiet one, and alert pins vanish when their building is gone.
Inserter Warnings - An inserter set to take items from a building that only outputs fluids now flags itself as jammed.
Alerts - Overheat and maintenance alerts now report each distant area separately, and a dismissed warning stays away until you load the game again.
Building Notes - A building's note now shows on its storage alert notifications.
Cleared Alerts - A resolved alert lingers dimmed for ten seconds with a small countdown bar before it disappears.
Build Bar - Building cards are wider with larger artwork, and a name too long for its card now shrinks to fit instead of breaking mid-word.
Routers and Elevators - Routers, elevators and fluid routers now build instantly, like belts and pipes.
Light Post - No longer uses power, and can be set to stay on during the day. Lights go out when your factory runs out of power.
Fog - Now thins to match the Horizon Distance setting, keeping faraway buildings visible, and picks up the sky's colors at dawn and dusk.
Pollution - No longer thickens or tints the fog.
Environment Effects - Grime and wet ground now show at full detail out to the render distance, instead of ending 250 meters out.
Bug Fixes
Fixed grass and flowers failing to appear near you on large bases.
Fixed building overlay icons and text disappearing behind clouds, washing out against distant fog, or blurring and smearing.
Fixed cooling lava crusting into obsidian walls along a regular grid.
Fixed saving failing after you loaded a game earlier in the same session.
Fixed the Maintenance Depot's repair pack slots showing under Storage instead of Inputs in its inspector panel.
Fixed overheat warnings appearing on buildings that temperature does not affect, like inserters and light posts.
Fixed frozen machines being labeled as overheated.
Fixed loading a save changing the weather instead of continuing where it left off.
Fixed swaying trees, plants and items on belts leaving ghost trails with TAA or STP upscaling.
Fixed flat warm terrain forming circular ring step patterns around every rise.
Fixed ore deposits near the scanner's range edge not appearing until you moved much closer.
Fixed grass hit by player's light shining through solid ground.
Fixed the harvest tool not clearing a mark when you clicked an already marked harvestable.
Fixed Flux Cores being crafted when the computing reserve was empty.
Fixed heavy frame drops while aiming long belt or pipe lines with auto-route.
Fixed ruins spawning on stilts over rivers or buried inside hillsides.
Fixed hand harvested items missing from the statistics panel.
Fixed areas around harvested trees never unloading after loading a save.
Fixed inserters reporting jams when their target building was demolished.
Fixed many alerts arriving at once playing a pile of overlapping sounds.
Fixed quicksaving playing two save sounds.
Fixed auto-route building a flat belt or pipe run at the wrong height.
Fixed drawing a faster belt over a slower one upgrading it for free.
Fixed the inspector staying open on a belt or building that no longer exists.
Fixed aiming at buildings being offset one block upward, leaving the bottom row unclickable.
Fixed frequent brief stutters, worst about once a second.
Fixed fuel-burning machines stalling on their last bit of fuel and refusing to take a different fuel.
Fixed large factories running slower than they should.
Fixed large factory saves taking far longer to load than they should.
Fixed light shafts and volcano smoke cutting off at the render distance.
Fixed faraway water showing a different color than nearby water.
Fixed the sky staying perfectly clear in thick fog and storms.
Fixed clicks on panels falling through to the world behind them.
Fixed the World Seed box accepting letters and symbols that were not the seed the world used.
Fixed several wiki and tutorial pages describing outdated mechanics, like repair pack tiers and fuel values.
Fixed tall machines like the Mining Drill overlapping roofs and showing overlay icons inside them after loading a save.
Fixed filling terrain placing more blocks than you had materials for.
Fixed draining fluid with a full inventory destroying it instead of stopping.
Balance Changes
Alien Terrain - Now starts appearing 5 km from the landing site instead of 10 km.
Landmark Structures - Ruins and monuments now generate at least 500 m from the landing site.
Ore and Oil Deposits - Now equally rich everywhere. Ore was up to ten times richer and oil pockets six times larger far from the landing site.
Mining Drill MK 1 - Mining area increased from 7x7 to 15x15. Drills already built keep the area they were placed with.
Bushes and Cacti - Bushes now yield Biomass instead of Wood, and cacti yield Biomass alongside water.
Trees - Wood yields now vary by species, from steady birches to wild-swinging maples. Felling time scales with tree size.
Alien Science Pack - Now a research cost, required by Xenoplasm Synthesis and Planetary Survey.
Mushroom - Xenomass yield increased from 1 to 1-2 per harvest.
Solid Fuel - Fuel value reduced from 30000 to 14000 kJ. Refining oil or coal into it now costs a little energy instead of producing it.
Research Costs - Industrial and later techs cost two to four times more cycles, age-gate techs like Electronics Science quadruple (120 to 480), and pack costs per cycle are now uniform within each age.
Computer Clusters - Clustering bonus raised from 15% to 25% per doubling, and clustered Computers now also hold increase the buffer.
Industrial Science Pack - Now made from 4 steel plates, 2 circuits and 2 steel gears instead of a frame, a circuit and a motor.
Electronics Science Pack - Now made from an advanced circuit, 2 steel plates and 2 PCBs instead of a frame and glass.
Building Costs - Construction costs reworked from the steel age on. Buildings cost more and use their own era's materials, so iron and copper fade out of later construction.
Titanium - An ingot now rolls into 1 plate instead of 2, and cuts into 2 gears instead of 3.
Aluminum Plates - An ingot now presses into 1 plate instead of 2.
Lightning - Strike interval during storms increased from 1-10 seconds to 10-30 seconds.