Hello everyone!
Welcome to another FOUNDRY Friday episode, today we are taking an in-depth look into the recently previewed “Construction Industry” feature.
Feature Summary
Very large structures and buildings are now built through construction sites. You set down a base object, which starts the construction site. Then you configure the building to your needs through a visual editor. The configuration affects the properties of the building, for example a bigger Blast Furnace has a higher throughput than a smaller one, but is a lot more expensive to build. Before construction can begin, construction material needs to be shipped to the construction site. This happens through flying transport ships. Finally your construction site gets built by construction ships and drones.
Motivation
Although everything in FOUNDRY is built instantly by hand, to me it always felt a bit off when you build a massive building in an instant out of your pocket. The construction industry feature is an attempt to make large structures feel more impactful. It gives your factory a less light-weight feeling when large structures are built over time with specialized construction ships & dron, while other parts of the factory are manufacturing the required construction material and transport ships move it from warehouses to construction sites.
Another reason was to improve user experience, the previous way of building our large structures (also known as modular buildings) was a bit cumbersome and not easy to understand. This rework makes the process of planning those structures a lot easier while adding additional depth to the game. Through the visual building editor it is a lot easier to get an understanding of how the buildings will look, which parts you can modify and how to set it up.
Potential concerns which we are mindful of: FOUNDRY is a sandbox game and the ability to build and modify things quickly is very valued by a lot of players, therefore we are not going to make construction sites take ages to build. So far we are looking into build times between 5 and 15 minutes, although you might need to build multiple construction ship ports to achieve such build speeds. Buildings can be edited through this system, so you do not need to tear them down in case you want to modify them. And most importantly: When you tear down a building, you are never going to lose items. However, tearing down items will return rubble, which can be recycled into construction material. Also we are not going to convert dozens of machines into this system, the vast majority of objects built will remain as you are used to, this is mostly aimed at a handful, almost monumental parts of your factory.
My personal favorite about this feature is that some systems we have added, like the transport ships, tie seamlessly into other future gameplay elements, therefore making it a less isolated feature. I cannot reveal too much yet, but large modular buildings are not going to be the only thing you will be building in FOUNDRY. On a further note: The construction industry seems like the perfect way to integrate a blueprint system at some point in the future. But I want to be clear that we are not yet working on such a feature.
Construction Buildings and Items
Construction Material
The core item of this system is “Construction Material”. It is produced in Assemblers and is made of all major items: Xenoferrite, Steel, Machinery Parts, Polymer Boards, Glass, Concrete and Electronic Components. Construction material has a very low stack size and therefore is incredibly unsuited to be transported by hand. That brings us to the place where Construction Material is stored, the Construction Material Warehouse.
Construction Material Warehouse
The warehouse's purpose is simple, it is able to hold massive amounts of construction material (in the range of tens of thousands) and it allows for it to be picked up there by transport ships. As a side feature Warehouses are also able to hold Construction Rubble (which you are getting from tearing down or modifying buildings) and it automatically recycles it for you back into Construction Material.
Transport Ship Ports
Transport Ship Ports hold four transport ships, which are automatically searching for transportation tasks and fulfill them. No need for advanced configurations, if you have a Warehouse providing Construction Material, and a construction site requiring it, a transport ship will automatically take off and move the required items. As a side note: Those are not to be confused with our previously previewed cargo ships, which are intended as long distance transport option for specifically configured bulk cargo shipping.
Construction Ship Ports
Moving construction material to a construction site isn’t enough, they aren’t going to build themselves. For that you need a construction ship, which is housed in a Construction Ship Port. As soon as there is any construction material available at any construction site, the construction ship will automatically take off and start assembly. Again, no configuration required, everything is automated.
Construction Sites
It starts with the manually placed base object, and once configured and under construction, they cover the extents of the building, filled up with metal scaffolding. If torn down, the base object is left to be manually demolished as any regular machine.
Visual Editor
Once a base has been placed, you can use a new handheld item, the Construction Planner to enter the visual editor. Once opened you’ll see a 3D and text based overview of the building. It provides all necessary information plus an easy and straightforward way to edit the building to your liking.
This concludes today's blog post and I hope I was able to provide a better understanding of this feature and I am looking forward to your feedback. It is a big feature and it surely will get a few changes here and there to further refine it. I’m never getting tired of mentioning how your feedback has been a tremendous benefit to the development progress and if you want to get in touch, both me and the FOUNDRY team are very active in our Discord.
Until next time,
-mrmcd
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