Some aspects of the design of Overcrowd had their roots, bizarrely it might seem, in rogue-likes and FTL specifically. The common idea was that you build your team of staff/crew members and take them with you to build a station/man a spaceship over a series of randomised landscapes/space encounters.
Over time, the idea has become diluted, as I realised certain aspects of management and pausable RTS rogue-likes are incompatible. First, I added staff AI to remove the micromanagement present in FTL, which is too burdensome in large stations. You can disabae staff AI and get that raw experience if you prefer the micro, but most management players probably don't want that I have discovered, and I can understand that!
Secondly, permadeath was removed very early on. You don't want to restart your whole campaign every time you fail a station. But a vestige of this was the need to restart a zone from scratch after failing (when rep hits zero).
This has proven a problem for some, who spend a long time building a station, lose, and then dislike having to build it all from scratch. That is fair, so this build fixes that. If you fail, you can reload from your most recent save on that zone (be that manual or autosave) and continue from that point - if you want. Alternatively, you can hit restart zone if you would rather try a new layout or tactic, or if your most recent save is untenable.
This currently only applies for campaign, but I see no reason not to add it to Commute Of The Day and possible Sandbox mode too soon. As always, I value your thoughts and feedback.
I've also continued to make a few more balance changes, which should make the game handle better in general, plus a few bug fixes.
Beta 209
-do not call emergency train if no power
-clocks do not create dead cell adjacent
-litter is less likely to distress commuters, scaled by difficulty
-Commuters check for crowded state more often
-Campaign scenarios will not trigger if you do not have requisite tech level to potentially deal with them
-To do list doesn't open if in game menu
-Cannot click HUD for shortcuts to reports if in game menu
-Can reload most recent last save if you fail a zone! A note of caution. This includes auto and manual saves. If your autosave triggers just before your are about to fail, you would have to click restart zone if you cannot rescue your game there. I'll keep this under review.
-Fixed exploit/bug where building a plant at entrance guaranteed excessive rep gain from every commuter entering station, unbalancing rep system