Hi comrades! I've been working on a few gameplay things and a couple of side-adventures, and they are slowly materializing into a big update scheduled to release in December. I'm going to run a few dev diaries to present the changes leading up to the release, just like the good old days.
This week: Calibration Improvements & Overseeing Power
Next week: New Keywords, Dueling Improvements & Departments Reworks
Week after: Strategic Investments & Edge Harbor
Update release date: December 19th
Sorry, a few changes! Dev diaries were delayed a bit, and update will release on December 20th
Calibration Improvements
authorizing new reaction — quick and easy
Secretly, I consider Calibration one of the coolest parts of the game. You can change how departments work in small or big ways, and you can mix policies to your liking. It also adds a depth layer to the factory building, which I enjoy.
So, any interruptions to this gameplay makes it a bit more annoying than it has to be. With that in mind, I removed the need to add or remove energy from a department. Instead, departments now draw as much energy as needed for their policies. A click, saved! This required rewriting how factories handle power, and going through related screens to adjust designs. It plays much better in the end.
I also spent a bit of time on a requested feature: policies now show how exactly they will change the reactions in the tooltip! Some of it is automatic, and some I have to carefully set up, but it is a big improvement for the calibration gameplay.
Another change is that policies can now authorize new reactions. For example, Wires Department gets a new Gold reaction if you are willing to invest some of your power this way.
And as a quality-of-life thing, you can now Shift-Click on department to quickly go to the Calibration screen. I'm also considering consolidating Calibration and Inspecting into one screen (minus another click!), but I haven't come to a decision here yet.
Overseeing Power
finding a bit of extra power
I always thought about "Look Close" button as a crutch. Once you learn that you can just click on departments to inspect them, there's exactly zero need for this button, except maybe that it reminds players about inspecting.
Another thing on my to-do list was a separate UI for managing factory power. Sometimes, you just want to quickly find an extra power unit for your new shiny department. At first, I was planning to make a full-screen panel with a spreadsheet, very Excel approach. But once I started prototyping, I realized it would be better to have this ability in the game itself, just as Inventory or Dueling works.
So, converging on these two themes, let me present to you: Overseeing Power.
It's a new lens of looking at factory. You can quickly see who is siphoning your power. Left click on a department will lead you straight to Calibration screen (and you can return just as quickly.) Right click allows you to cut a bit of power to department, so you can use it elsewhere. And you can go straight to building the factory from here, or reset all your power in one click.
I'm quite happy with how this turned out, and I find myself using it regularly when fine-tuning. In this case, keeping things in-world turned out better than spreadsheets.
On a more general note, I don't like that there's been almost six months from the previous update, and I will try to release smaller updates more regularly in the future. However, with some time and rest away from the Early Access release, I'm feeling inspired and happy about the state of the game, and I feel it coming together bit by bit.
I'll see you next week to talk about new keywords, quirks, reactions, departments, and many other little gameplay improvements.