It's been a hard six weeks of survival for our poor stranded Duplicants, but something adorable is on the horizon that's sure to make them smile - Critter Ranching! With new tools at their disposal our Duplicants can interact with critters in a variety of cute and helpful ways. Will Hatches become Dupe's best friend? Is there enough grooming in the world to make a Puft smell good? What DO Shine Bugs eat?
These questions and more can be answered in Oxygen Not Included: Ranching Upgrade Mark I!
Wait... What's "Mark I"?
Our team has a lot of ideas for where we want to take creatures in Oxygen Not Included... So many ideas, in fact, that they couldn't all fit into one upgrade! This means that Mark I is just the first of two Upgrades (the next being "Mark II"), which will have the same development cycle and release another 6 weeks from now with even more critter-related content for the game.
Releasing two part upgrades in this way gives us time to fully flesh out more complex ideas, iterate on existing content, and try out new things... and while we can't reveal all of what will be in the remaining half of the upgrade, we can say that it will increase the depth of critter loops and utility, and will further build on the mechanical foundations laid in this half of the upgrade. (And maybe there'll be a new species...)
So What's New in Mark I?
Critter Ranching
Critter ranching allows you to interact with critters in a variety of new ways and integrate them into the daily routine of your colony. Duplicants, particularly those employed as Ranchers, can care for Hatches, Shine Bugs, and Pufts to increase their happiness, farm additional resources from them, and even breed new critters for your herd.
Key Features
- Critter Wrangling: Use the new Wrangle tool and your Ranchers can capture critters alive and move them around your base! No traps required.
- Critter Care: Tons of new buildings and systems have been implemented to keep your precious critters happy, healthy, and most importantly productive.
- Needs and Conditions: Each critter species has specific needs that must be met in order to maintain their health and comfort. Temperature, atmosphere, and food needs will all need to be met in order to keep a critter happy, and a happy critter is a productive one!
- Critter Feeders: Critters are hungry little guys and now have calorie stores just like Duplicants. They'll need to eat regularly in order to stay alive, but luckily feeding them has never been easier! Just pop a bit of unused stone into a Critter Feeder and watch a Hatch munch away!
- Grooming Stations: Clip those claws, unmatt that fur, and shine those shells! Critters appreciate it when their handlers keep them in tip top shape, so be sure to build a fewer grooming station and let the primping begin!
- New Ranching Job: This new job comes with a boost to the newly introduce Ranching attribute, and will teach Duplicants the art of wrangling critters in the wild for capture (no traps required!). Dupes who learn the Ranching trade will also be able to use a Grooming Station to give their livestock's happiness a boost from time to time.
- Critter Reproduction: New reproduction cycles means you can ranch critters to increase their numbers. Raise a flock of twenty Pufts!
- Happiness: You know, they say "Happiness is a warm Hatch." Well, Happiness is the new metric by which you can see how well your critters are cared for. Creatures with high happiness will not only produce more useful products, but they may even feel comfortable enough to lay some new eggs!
- Eggs! When a critter's Reproduction stat reaches 100, they will now lay a brand new delicious adorable critter egg. These eggs can be
immediately cooked and ravenously eatenraised with the utmost care to produce new critters, allowing you to increase the size of your lovable critter herd. - Incubators: Build an Incubator to ensure all your critter eggs are safe, secure, and most importantly, warm. These Incubators are equipped with ideal settings for each known species of critter egg, so go ahead, set it and forget it! (But make sure a Rancher is on hand to oversee the hatching!)
And More!
- New Database: A new encyclopedia has been added to connect you to a wealth of knowledge about foods, plants, animals, elements, systems... you get the idea! View all stats and functions for buildings and creatures at any time to plan your base to absolute perfection. And who knows? Some mysterious entries may appear from time to time, too...
- Priority System Tweaks: The "Priorities" screen has been split from the Jobs screen into its own menu and can be used to manage individual Duplicants' priorities. Colony priorities have been replaced with a new "Sub-Priorities" button, which can still be used to set the importance of pending tasks but will be overridden by individual Dupe priorities.
- 18 New Geyser Types: Tons of new points of interest have erupted onto the scene!
- Geysers, Fumaroles, Volcanoes, Fissures
- Copper, Iron, Gold, Co2, Hydrogen and more
- Both cool and hot temperatures
- Explore and find them all!
- Performance Enhancements!
- Tons of bug fixes, rebalances, QOL additions, and more!
Finally, we'd like to say a big thank-you to everyone who played the Ranching Mark I Upgrade Preview, submitted crash and bug reports, and gave your feedback in our Suggestions Forum. We're always grateful to hear your thoughts and thank you for the time spent playing our game.
We hope you enjoy Ranching Mark I!
[Game Update] 260921 - 3/22/2018
- Fix crash that could occur when a text box with a link in it was destroyed
- Updated Database icons for geysers
- Fix for a number of bugs related to dupes crossing exosuit checkpoints
- "Rummage" for lockers and vending machines now prioritizes correctly
- Seasoned Rancher hat artwork updated
- Hatch eggs are now visible as they are being laid
- Dupe carrying capacity from strength correctly calculated on load/spawn
[Game Update] 261394 - 3/27/2018
- Wild critters lose fertility to prevent them from laying infinite eggs
- Fixed tooltips on Priorities screen
- Critters get unhappy if in a door, tile, or tiny room
- Fixed Toggle priority on buildings that don't normally have priority (like the Printing Pod)
- Adjusted the default priority of auto-disinfect on buildings which don't have priority to 5
- "Research Complete" notification tooltip fixed
- Ration Boxes and Fridges fetch errand priorities are now controlled by Supply rather than Storage
- Insulated pipes/vents once again insulate
- Tweaked the starting calories and hungry range so that creatures try and stay more full. This prevents wild creatures in new games from sitting around doing nothing for many cycles.
- Transfer arm now (mostly) can't pick up or deliver through tiles
- Improved Wrangle fx
- Duplicants will now take more than one pill from a stack of pills.
- Fixed several temperature bugs with Pneumatic Doors
- Farmer's Touch will no longer make crops grow if they are stifled
- Disabling an errand group on the Priorities screen will now disable those errands even if it's the dupe's current Job.
- Fix crash when duplicants tried putting on too much clothing: Duplicants can no longer equip more than one vest
- Fix crash that could occur when crops dropped their fruit
- Fix a crash in the Planter side screen
- More helpful error message when a game can't be saved
- Added/fixed icons for many Database entries
- Increased capacity of the Critter Feeder to 2,000kg
[Game Update] 261452 - 3/27/2018
- Revert the crash fix for vests as it was causing more crashes. We'll look in to it further.
- Toilets no longer crash if they were flushing when the game loaded
- Fixed Polymer Press description
[Game Update] 262109 - 4/3/2018
- Fixed some prioritization issues with the Incubator
- Fixed chores being disabled or not disabled from traits. Now the dupe's behaviour should match what the Priorities screen shows, whether it was disabled by a trait or by the player
- Pufts and Shine Bugs only lure to a Lure with the appropriate bait
- Toilets once again save/load their remaining flushes