Hi there!
So.. I was working on the next hot-patch for 0.7.4, but I seemingly got carried away and the update became a tad larger than anticipated. Given that I can't possibly call this a hot-patch anymore, welcome to 0.7.5, the Unscheduled Update!
As usual, full changelog at the bottom of this article, and yes, this is fully compatible with previous savegames.
Creature Upgrades
Remember our comical 6 legged spiders? Well, no more, we now have fully animated, high quality and 8 legged giant spiders.
There are 4 variants total, including the ice spider, venomous spider, and our good old red and brown spiders. As usual, the new variants can drop eggs (once you get the animal care technology) for you to grow.
Also, in the same spirit as with the scorpions, a Spider Queen has also been added to the game. It's a mid to late game boss-type enemy with unique weapons.
Crabs have also been updated with, again, new detailed and well animated models.
No new variants for them, yet but it's just a matter of time.
Lastly, all the new redesigned creatures (spiders, scorpions, crabs) have proper death animations instead of just "blinking out" of existence.
More Content
To make mining a tad more interesting, mountains and cave walls have a very small chance to uncover gold, coal, quartz and iron deposits, which in turn can be mined for those resources.
Gold can be smelted into proper gold bars (with metallurgy) which can be sold at a very high price to merchants. Quartz can also be sold (for a small profit) or used to build windows (don't think about it).
This is basically an experiment with mining. I intend to add more ores in the future and make them fully part of the economy.
Additionally, I added 3 new firearms (high tech assault rifle, a light SMG and a sawed off shotgun) and 2 new pieces of armor (mercenary armor and police riot helmet). They can be found during trading, expeditions and on the corpses of some of your foes.
User Interface
The factory/crafting station menus scale vertically with screen estate now, which is super handy on heavily modded games where factories have tons of recipes.
The generator and the power relay menus have been tweaked, and they display the total power consumption, production and balance for the whole grid they are connected to. This makes power management much easier.
Once you have the "logistics" technology and own at least an outpost on the map, you'll be able to access the new Outpost Manager located in the Faction menu:
It shows all your outposts and allows you to interact with them without having to use the world map. This is especially useful in the late game when you have to juggle with a dozen or more outposts.
Misc and Bug Fixes
Right, this was initially supposed to be a hot-patch :)
This update fixes a bunch of problems with pasture and butchering mostly. Pastures would still count butchered and dead animals as occupying room; after loading a savegame, it was possible for animals marked to be butchered to never be processed; and so on. Additionally I found a 'small' bug with multi-bulllet weapons (flamer thrower, shotguns..) that was diminishing their efficiency against crowds by quite a lot. They are now as deadly as they should be.
And last but not least. When an update add or modify game events, until now, you'd have to start a new game to get them to trigger. Well, not anymore! New events will trigger in old save-games without any problem.
Save Compatibility
This is compatible with any save-game from 0.7.2 and over, with a single cave-eat. Existing crabs and spiders will not have their graphics updated (newly spawned one will be, though).
General Notes
Outside of the usual small hot-patches, this should be the last big update for at least a month. The next milestone update is a pretty big one (prisonner management), so it will take me some time to get that working correctly.
And yes. This 0.7.5 update will be priced at $11.99 (from 10.99) starting Friday, as mentioned in the previous article.
Full Changelog
- Balance: Small HP boost to some spiders
- Balance: Slightly reduced Flamethrower DPS because the fix below is making them way too powerful otherwise
- Balance: Increased the minimal amount of money the trader can spawn with
- Balance: Military armor and military gas mask are now considered 'rare' (less likely to appear in loot/trade)
- Balance: Damaged versions of top tier weapons and armors also marked as rare
- Balance: Higher bullet speed for most weapons
- Balance: Tweaks to some of the store-type buildings (small chance to find random seeds or electronic parts)
- Content: Added new spider variants (ice and venom spiders) which can also lay eggs and be tamed
- Content: Added Giant mother spider that will spawn smaller ones around her (similar mob/event/reward combo to the Scorpion Queen)
- Content: Mining mountains (and caves) has a very small chance to uncover gold, coal, quartz and iron deposits which can be mined for resources
- Content: Gold ore can be smelted at the forge to make valuable gold bars (with metallurgy)
- Content: Quartz can be used to build windows (don't ask about it) with metallurgy or it can be sold for profit
- Content: Added mercenary armor and police riot helmet to loot and trade tables
- Content: Added 3 new firearms (assault rifle, light SMG, sawed off shotty) to loot and trade tables
- Engine: It is no longer required to start a new game to take advantage of new or edited special events after an update
- Graphics: Replaced the giant crab models by much better looking ones with proper animations
- Graphics: Replaced the giant spider models by much better looking ones with proper animations
- Graphics: Added proper death animations to spiders, scorpions and giant crabs
- Graphics: Standardized animal 'armor' textures so they fit properly in the menus
- Graphics: Replaced the spears' textures by better versions
- UI: The factory menu's height scales with screen estate (like depots and pastures)
- UI: Added feedback in the game-log when a pet or cattle give birth
- UI: The generator menu displays the total power consumption, production and balance of it's associated grid
- UI: Updated power relay menu to also contain the total power usage for the associated grid + small make-over wasting less screen estate
- UI: In the factory menu, I clarified the field about power consumption when the factory is inactive
- UI: Added option to reset game speed when non raid events happen
- UI: Added outpost tracker to the Faction menu (Available after Logistic tech)
- UI: Robots can now be destroyed (you get a very few resources back), through a self destruct sequence located in their character panel (replaces banish button for normal settlers)
- Fixed: Pastures would still count butchered and dead animals as occupying room (until save/reload)
- Fixed: Removing "to butcher" marker from an animal wouldn't always work as expected
- Fixed: After loading a save, it was possible for animals marked to be butchered not to be processed
- Fixed: Multi bullet weapons like flamethrowers or shotguns could not hit anyone but the intended target of the shot (which was decreasing their efficiency by a lot)
- Fixed: The minor events "good news" and "bad news" could never trigger
- Fixed: Minor issues with jobs issued by farms
- Fixed: Possible graphical crash with farms if they are 1x1 sized
- Fixed: Robots could get hit by friendly fire
- Fixed: Creature nests would still spawn when hostile creatures are disabled in the settings
- Fixed: Some of the giant creatures wouldnt' be scaled properly when tamed (oversized spiders and crabs)
- Fixed: Multi selection screen allowed to put people who can't do military at all in military mode