Ahoy! Captain Filip here and I have some exciting updates from our ongoing work on the Early Access build!
New tier 3 truck
Let me introduce you to our first tier 3 vehicle in the game: The Haul truck! This big boy will be able to carry 3-4x more cargo than a tier 2 truck, or more than 10x of a tier 1 truck. Currently, there are two versions, one for loose materials like ore from mines and one for liquids and gasses.
Unlike on lower tiers of trucks, the cargo hold on the haul truck will be fixed so you need to plan their usage carefully. We are also planning to have a third version that can transport unit cargo but that will come later, likely after release.
Building collapse mechanic prototype
One of the important missing mechanics in Beta is the interaction of buildings with the terrain. The terrain under buildings is simply fixed and never collapses. Players quickly discovered this and used it as a way to simplify mining.
To make the game more realistic and challenging, we have implemented a new mechanic that causes buildings to collapse when the terrain underneath them is missing (or when they are covered by the terrain). Every building has a certain threshold based on its size. A notification will be shown when there are any issues with terrain under buildings, so the player has a good chance of saving the situation.
Below you can see a prototype of this mechanic in action. Notice that buildings now have a concrete base plate that holds them even if the terrain is dug out.
Upgradable world mines & oil rigs
Instead of 5 oil rigs on the world map with 3 fixed shifts we are going to provide a bit different experience. Each oil rig and mine will have a utilization slider. The max possible utilization will be determined by the upgrade level of a particular mine or oil rig. There will be fewer oil rigs and mines on the world map, but upgrades will significantly increase their throughput. Upgrades will have increasing costs and it is also possible that demand for each utilization level will grow more than linearly (especially for greater utilizations). This will bring interesting possibilities as some players might want to optimize for a single product and some players might aim for variety. This will fold in with other mechanics later, such as contracts or the possibility for end-game research to provide even more upgrades. Whilst I’m covering the world map. We are also going to add a mine for limestone and most likely one coal mine. We still play with the idea of randomizing the total number of mines available or providing a difficulty configuration for their number or even a total quantity limit per mine / oil rig.
Update from the community
A Discord member Blottoo shared an amazing build of a pollution minimizing factory. In their own words:
“Introducing: Blottoo’s Clean Air Act. As a first step I banned all H2 Reformers from my island and stopped producing Fertilizer out of Ammonia to save it for H2 production. All Fertilizer that I need comes from Digestate which is a byproduct of my Bio Gas Plant and the Wastewater Treatment. I’m sending all my exhaust to the Exhaust Scrubber and they will make CO2, Sulfur and LP Steam from that. With the LP Steam i make some water in the Thermal Desalinator. I’m mixing Sulfur and Diesel into Rubber and trade that into wood. To get rid of all CO2 I have to turn it into Fuel Gas in a Chemical Plant. For that i need just some H2. In my case roughly 240 H2 in a minute. For that I need a ridiculous amount of 76 Electrolyzer. With the received Fuel Gas I’m running 4 Gas Boilers which are giving Steam for 4 HP Turbines and 2 LP Turbines. DP Steam will be turned into water. The whole process will produce 8 MW of Electrical Power. But the usage of Power is at 12 MW. The gap of 4 MW is a lot of Power that I’m losing for this process, but my loved citizens can be happy now, because I reduced the amount of Air Pollution from average 2K in a year to average 800 in a year.”
And that’s all we have for you today. I hope that in the next update we will be able to cover our plans and timeline.
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