Airships and Airship Docks
Airships are a new worker unit that allow for flexible point-to-point delivery of goods over long distances. They have a large capacity (4 filterable slots of 25 items each), can travel through the sky above obstacles, and can pick up and drop off at any building with clearance above it. It will be very useful when you need to make a large one-off delivery, or need to move a set of goods over a crowded area.
This is obviously very powerful, so there are some key restrictions to make sure it doesn't make everything else in the game obsolete.
For one, they move pretty slowly - about 2 blocks per second. They also require 4 population capacity, so it will not be viable to spam them. They are only only available late-game (Airship research becomes available once Air Mana Purification research has been completed). And, when transferring items to and from buildings, they unload slowly (2 items / second).
However, there are ways to improve this performance. For one, there is a new Airship Dock storage building that holds 400 items, and can transfer 25 items a second between Airships. So for high throughput routes, you will probably want to use those at your endpoints. Another is below...
Air Shrines and Worker Boosts
The Air Shrine has finally been introduced! When charged with Air Crystals, the Air Shrine will apply a 'Boosted' status effect to all population-based worker units that walk within a few blocks which doubles their movement and harvesting speed. It also reaches into the sky above it, so if you put an Air Shrine along an Airship route you will get much better results!
Mana Rework
The Mana system has been overly complicated for a long time, frequently blocking players from progressing further in the game. So some big changes have been made to it.
There's a lot of details, but the tl;dr is that Mana Transmitters and Mana Receivers are no longer necessary. Instead of Mana Power, you can pipe Mana Crystals directly into and out of buildings, or deliver them with belts or workers. And, all your old pipe networks will be totally compatible with the new system. See below:
Here's the full changes to the Mana system:
- Crystals can move through mana pipes without needing to be converted to & from a power format (what Transmitters and Receivers used to do).
- Recipes that previously consumed Mana Power will instead consume physical Crystals and produce Depleted Crystals as a byproduct. You will still need to remove these from the building, or else production will be blocked. However this can be done with pipes or with other physical means like conveyor belts or workers.
- Since many buildings will now output Depleted Crystals as a byproduct, an ‘Exclude Crystal’ filter will automatically be applied to any Grabbers or Omniconnectors in legacy maps that don’t otherwise have a filter, and will be applied by default to any new Grabbers or Omniconnectors that are created when dragging new pipe or belt paths to buildings that produce these byproducts.
- Transmitters and Receivers will simply function as a building that provides a convenient optional interface to the mana pipe network. So that means existing Transmitters and Receivers can remain in place without having any negative effects.
- Receivers now accept Charged or Depleted crystals. The building has 4 storage slots holding up to 20 items each, and a top-level item filter.
- You will still need to use Rechargers to convert Depleted Crystals back to a default Charged state.
- Mana boosters are a bit different. They still exist, but instead of slowly draining the Crystal they will simply accept or reject it if the crystal’s energy can be fully consumed. When this occurs the Crystal becomes Depleted and will proceed down the mana pipe, not stored in the building. Crystals used to power Boosters will only leave the building via Mana Pipe.
- Crystals arriving via Pipes will attempt to load into inventory, and if that is full, will attempt to charge a Booster value. Crystals arriving via any other means (wagons, conveyor belt, etc) will not be used to power Boosters.
- You can force a Mana Connector pipe to only supply Booster Power by changing its Access Type to the new value: “Power In”.
- Also as a result of mana rework, the amount of Crystals consumed and converted to Depleted will change up or down, depending on recipe.
All these changes are meant to make the Mana system more consistent with how the rest of the game works, and hopefully is much easier to use.
Pipe Overflow Setting
There's a new "Overflow Behavior" parameter on all pipe connectors. This setting determines what happens if the connected building is full or otherwise unable to accept the pipe item. There are three settings:
- Hold: The pipe item will stay at the connector until there is room in the building, blocking anything behind it.
- Bypass: The pipe item will continue moving down the pipe unchanged.
- Default: This is meant to mimic legacy pipe behavior so that existing maps don't get affected. Its effect depends on the connector setup: Mana Connectors default to ‘Hold’ behavior, unless the item is a Depleted Crystal, which will bypass. Other pipe items (Steam, Water, and Omni) default to ‘Bypass’, unless the pipe is non-contiguous, where it will default to Hold.
Additional Changes:
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug: Goods Supply Panel (shown when inspecting Markets) would display the wrong list of available goods when switching between maps with different rule sets
- Fixed bug: non-rail units would attempt to lock to rail tile directions during placement
- In Creative mode, all building recipes, upgrades and research are visible and available (previously were locked based on research state)
- Fixed bug: ‘Speed: 100%’ was being shown on the building selection panel for buildings that don’t have any speed modifiers (Markets, Trading Posts, Shrines)
- Fixed bug: Boxcar icon was wrong color
- Cursor no longer reverts back to selection mode after placing a Temple
- Fixed bug: Earth Shrines were not showing Area-of-effect on build or select
- Fixed bug: Train would sometimes fail to load or unload if the Locomotive stopped in a location overlapping two different Train Stops
- Fixed bug: blank Hotbar items would appear red / invalid on Hotbar reload
- Fixed bug: possible unexpected behavior when copying an object without a filter onto an object with a filter
- Fixed bug: Campaign Maps 1-4 had the ‘Restrict Minecart Inventory’ rule set to Off instead of On (fix doesn’t affect maps in progress)
- Fixed bug: Newly-placed sign posts would not show their messages on data overlay panel (F)
- Fixed bug: Updating Sign Post Labels and Signal Tags would not immediately update the new value on the selected item panel
- Fixed bug: Research would jump ahead to a nearly complete state if its count was > 100 (Is a factor when research cost multiplier is > 1)
- Fixed bug: Deactivating a Train Stop would not allow a parked train to continue moving
- Fixed bug: A train would remain at a station attempting to transfer items in small amounts if station was slowly emptying at the same time
Balance Changes
- Mana Pipe recipe outputs 4 mana pipes instead of 1.
- Magic Conveyor Belt requires 20 fuel instead of 10
- Magic Rail Tile requires 20 fuel instead of 10
- Mana Brick requires 12 fuel instead of 6
- Mana Crystal requires 10 fuel instead of 4
- Modified several Trading Post recipes to make them more advantageous
- Increased speed of Train Stop loading and unloading from 1 second / load to .5 seconds / load
- Increased Yellow Coin cost of Boxcar, Tank Car, and Hopper from 100 coins to 500
- All Mana Stone mine production recipes produce 4X output. All recipes consuming Mana Stone require 4x amount as input. (Increases throughput requirement without affecting balance)
- All Ether production recipes produce 2X output. All recipes consuming Ether require 2X amount as input. (Again, increases throughput requirement without affecting balance)
- Terrain Purchase starts at 500 yellow coins instead of 1000, and cost increases much slower with each subsequent purchase
Other Misc Changes
- Moved ‘Custom’ game creation button above ‘Sandbox’
- Multiple Pipe Connectors are no longer placed when click-dragging the cursor during placement
- Added new models for growing, and fully grown Carrot & Potato resources
- Added admin command “anim on” and “anim off” to toggle worker bounce animations
As always, I welcome your feedback or suggestions on these forums or the Discord. Next up I plan on continuing work on the Campaign, and will add Map #5! Cheers and thanks for playing,
Erik