Hello everyone!
Today we have an adventurous new update for Oxygen Not Included: Spaced Out!
The Rad New Worlds update is focused on adding several new starting world options, making research more accessible, and filling some gaps in the radiation and nuclear gameplay. We’ve also been focused on fixing bugs and finding opportunities to polish the game. More on that point below...
New Worlds
We’ve added a new series of clusters and asteroids that lean heavily into Spaced Out! mechanics. The starting asteroid in these clusters is smaller, there are fewer biomes per asteroid, and instead of two nearby asteroids there are four. Sustainability in these clusters might require visiting multiple worlds and some creative thinking. These have varying degrees of difficulty, but are generally meant to be harder starts for players looking for a challenge.
Radiation and Nuclear
We’ve also added two new buildings to the Radiation category of the build menu.
The Radiation Lamp emits a constant and predictable cone of radiation as it consumes the uranium ore supplied to it.
The second building is the Manual Radbolt Generator, which produces a small but reliable amount of Radbolts with no electrical power required. Now, a little Uranium Ore and some Duplicant labour are all that is needed to get your Materials Science Research operation underway.
Additionally, we’ve greatly reduced the rate at which Radbolts decay while traveling. It is now possible to send Radbolts a significantly further distance than before.
Research Changes
We’ve made some changes to how Cosmic Research is conducted. Firstly, we’ve renamed it “Data Analysis Research” and it’s now generated by processing ‘Data Banks’ at the Virtual Planetarium. Data Banks can be generated in a number of ways, including using the Orbital Data Collection Lab, studying geysers, analyzing artifacts, and searching satellites and inspectable POIs.
Roadmap
In the last few weeks we’ve been gradually shifting our focus away from features and content and towards bugs and polish. Our intention is to continue this trend: fewer new features, more fixes! We’re thinking keenly about the path to launching Spaced Out! out of early access and so we believe it’s time to focus on getting the experience as stable and smooth as it needs to be for release.
The team is very grateful for all the testing, feedback, and commentary the community has given us so far. Please keep it up! We appreciate any help in getting Spaced Out! to full release - and beyond!
Full patch notes on the official forums. Please continue to report bugs here.