Hello everyone!
Where has the time gone? It's May already and would you believe this is the 6th update we've put out this year!
Since Early Access began, we've expanded on the space gameplay, added a bunch of new asteroids to the cluster map, and created new Spaced Out- and Classic-style starting asteroids. We’ve launched the entire radiation system, including radbolt infrastructure, research reactors, and Beetas. We've put in railguns, revised rocket parts for interplanetary infrastructure, and restored sustainability to the late-game. And now, we're putting radiation into your farms with...
The Peculiar Plants Update for Spaced Out! This Update introduces a whole new layer to farming, and allows you to utilize radiation for the good of your Duplicants’ tummies! There's also a number of radiation related (and unrelated!) tuning and balance changes, and new logistics options with the Meter Valves!
First, Plant Mutations are a brand new feature that integrates radiation with farming gameplay. There are now several strains of mutant seed that crop plants can drop when grown in radiation. Once analyzed at the new Botanical Analyzer, plants grown from these seeds will offer new trade-offs or efficiencies for your farms.
Along with updates to the farming economy, we've also made a number of changes and bug fixes to food preservation. Fridges are more effective at prolonging your food (and don't have so many bugs in them), and a more thorough mastery of temperature and atmosphere is required to fully preserve food.
Newly added Meter Valves have been added to allow sending specific amounts of material down your liquid, gas, and solid piping. Research Reactors' internal physics have also been updated, so you might want to double-check your colony's nuclear safety protocols. Rocket Ports and Launch Pads can be chained together. A lot of artwork has been updated and sound effects have been added.
And of course, we've made many fixes and improvements based on your feedback! We're still focused on improvements and quality of life, so there's never a better time to let us know how this DLC is working for you. Thank you for all your discussions and reports, and keep them coming!
What's New And Improved?
Features
- New Plant Mutation system allows specialized crop development
- Exposing plants to radiation causes them to drop mutant seeds
- Botanical Analyzer building will identify the traits of mutant seeds
- Mutant crops can be farmed for new tradeoffs and optimizations
- Added Gas Meter Valve, Liquid Meter Valve, and Conveyor Meter buildings.
- Updated Codex entries, descriptions and lore
- New plants
- Cryotank
- Radiation biome
- New artwork for the Rocket Port Loaders
Changes and Improvements
- Food preservation changes
- Rottable items now have two stages of cooling: Refrigerated and Deep Freeze
- Rottable items aren't fully preserved unless they are both in sterile atmosphere AND deep-frozen, because temperature and atmosphere effects now stack
- Temperature and atmosphere effects have been rebalanced to account for this
- Refrigerated food now lasts 5x as long instead of 2x
- Food preservation times were incorrectly reported in the Codex, and were missing their refrigeration value
- Rottable foods correctly detect if they're in an active fridge or not
- Refrigerators cool things to 2 degrees celsius instead of 4 degrees, so that they actually get cold enough to be refrigerated. (Note: foods in a powered fridge are always considered refrigerated regardless of temperature.)
- Foods dropped from a fridge will no longer continue cooling off on the ground
- "Unrefrigerated Food" notification now jumps to that food when clicked. (Only partially stale unrefrigerated food in storage will trigger the notification.)
- Errand "offset" fixes
- Fix exploit where Duplicants can pick up items diagonally through walls if standing on a raised tile
- Duplicants can access constructions diagonally from a greater number of nearby positions
- Farm Tiles and Hydroponic Tiles now allow corner access for delivery chores.
- Added low coolant diagnostic criteria to Research Reactor
- Research Reactor
- Fixed issue with inconsistent coolant/reaction mass conduction
- Enriched Uranium mass target increased 20x
- Increased coolant/reaction mass conduction scale 5x
- Meltdown temperature increased to 3000k
- Added new meltdown animations
- Fixed issue with temperature meter
- Increased meltdown projectile mass
- All sandbox tools now have their own icon
- Updated the Gassy Moo meteor artwork and impact animation
- Radbolt Generator sidescreen now shows radbolt production progress bar
- Small visual changes and added text label to radbolt direction selection panel.
- Added a new Duplicant animation on the main menu
- Non-crop plants now also have an ambient radiation limit
- Swapped Conveyor Chute and Conveyor Receptacle in the tech tree.
Sound
- Added Mud & Polluted Mud ambiences
- Added sounds for Mud falling, landing and Duplicant movement on Mud
- Added sounds for Radbolt Generator and Radbolt Reflector
- Fixed some instances of two click sounds playing simultaneously.
- Added missing Lead Suit Locker door closing/opening sounds.
- Added movement sounds to various radiation locomotion sets.
- Added movement sounds to the vomiter locomotion set.
- Added sounds for Radbolt traveling and explosion
- Added sounds for Duplicants reacting to radiation
- Added sounds for Railgun rail cleaning.
- Added Uranium Ore mining and movement sound effects
Bug Fixes
- Worldgen: Fixed an issue with spawning guaranteed geysers in some Forest Cluster seeds.
- Worldgen: Improvements to guaranteed POI spawning rules to decrease the amount of worldgen failures.
- Fixed closing tag for Forest Moonlet string (for translations)
- Fixed failing to switch worlds after using dev debug
- Fixed animations rendering outside of the world
- Plant sorting was broken on the planter box sidescreen, now the crops are consistently ordered
- Moved uranium materials further in the build materials list
- Fixed crash when dead Duplicant is hit by a Radbolt
- Fixed issue where buildings with solid parts like the Solar Panel and Fish Feeder would leave behind a "ghost floor."
- Fix crash that could occur if trying to load a world whose data no longer exists (i.e. a mod world)
- Fix some cases where a rocket would not correctly attach to the Rocket Ports on landing or disconnect on takeoff
- Launchpads now connect to Rocket Ports through each other in chains, so you can reliably have launchpads share ports
- Fix crash that could occur if a Launchpad was selected when its rocket takes off
- Rockets would sometimes wipe out each other's conduit endpoints, resulting in e.g. fuel tanks not getting fuelled
- Add check on the main menu that prevents crashing if the newest save file is corrupted or otherwise problematic
- Buildings and objects which have been marked "Empty Storage" now save/load the errand properly
- Minor art revision to the Niobium Geyser
- Fixed off by one error when calculating Rocket Platform/Rocket position ceilings
- Wilting Wheezeworts no longer emit radiation if they were wilting on load.
- Gas and Liquid Shutoff valves now immediately end their flowing animation when a red automation signal is received or no gas/liquid is flowing.
- Radbolt Generator progress meter hookup. Restored Radbolt animation when more than 1/2 way to launch.
- Fixed a crash where rockets and pads weren't correctly aware of each other during launch. This won't happen any further, but existing saves may require rebuilding the launchpad under the rocket before the rocket can successfully take off.
- Fixed a scaling issue with the Arbor Tree where the art was blurry at certain stages of the grow cycle
- Fixed issue that caused Cluster Style selection screen background to sometimes misalign
- Fixed rockets disappearing when landing offscreen
- Splitting ores now correctly updates the temperature transfer in the sim for both parts.
- Conveyor Shutoff now has a "Conveyor Rail Blocked" status and behaves like the other Shutoffs when blocked.
- Loading a save with a rocket with a Scanner Module exploring outside the FOW no longer crashes
- Fixed crash building a new module while viewing a rocket interior