Ahoy everyone, Captain Marek here, and I have another round of exciting Beta updates for you, so let’s dive straight in!
New maps
In the last Captain’s diary #10 Captain Filip described how we revamped our serialization infrastructure and one of the main features was support for playing on different maps. We have designed three brand-new maps of various difficulties that will challenge you in different ways. We will add these new maps into the beta. Let me show them to you.
The first new map is called The Beach, and the first thing you notice is that you start on a sandy beach. There is plenty of space to build your factory, but farms cannot be built on sand, so the challenge is with their constrained placement. Another challenge is that there is not much space to build cargo docks and the main island has tall mountains around the perimeter, so you will need to either make an artificial reef or use space further out
The second map Golden peak, is named after its dominant feature – a tall peak in the middle made of gold ore! This map is probably slightly more challenging than The Beach since there is a tall mountain in the center formed by many platforms on different heights that need to be connected via ramps in order to get access. Expanding the buildable land by mining the mountain and dumping rocks into the ocean is a vital strategy here.
The third new map is called You shall not pass, and it is an experimental map to test your skills. The start location is in a very small and constrained valley, and while you have huge amounts of resources, you need to reach the top plateau before you run out of coal and wood. After reaching the top, you are rewarded with a large area for building a huge factory so you can utilize all the resources available to you. This map is for experts only, and we are very curious if anyone will be able to beat this map.
Finally, we also keep the Alpha map in the pool for people who would like to try. We have improved resource placement and amounts based on feedback.
Map generator improvements
In addition to three new maps, the map generator was significantly improved to generate more visually pleasing and realistic-looking terrains.
One of the new features is that ores (such as iron ore) can now be partially covered with rocks. This makes them look a little more natural, and they blend better with surrounding rocky terrain.
The next feature allows certain terrain parts to be partially covered with grass on areas that are not too steep. This greatly improved the look of rocky terrain and mountains since bare rocks did not look too good. This feature also makes coal deposits nicely blended with the surrounding terrain.
Gif animation showing the effect of grass cover on rocks and coal.
And the final feature I’d like to mention is the addition of limestone resources which will be used for concrete production and many other things.
Rotary kiln
As we have mentioned previously, we are restructuring some of the early game chains. One of them is concrete production. We have added cement as a semi-product which is made of limestone in the rotary kiln. So please welcome the new rotary kiln!
Uranium enrichment
A critical piece of the nuclear power plant will be a uranium enrichment facility. And we have just finished it! The enrichment plant will transform uranium into enriched uranium pellets that are then combined with steel in an assembler to form fuel rods that go into a nuclear reactor.
And that’s it for this diary post. Thank you for reading, and let us know what you think on our Discord server! Captain Marek out.