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    • Jun 2, 2022

Captain’s diary #24: Captain of Industry released in Early Access!

Ahoy Captains! We are incredibly excited to announce that Captain of Industry is now released in Early Access!


Image of an island from our discord member - TheOldGuy

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our generous backers who pledged and helped us to make this game better over the last year and we would like to also give a warm welcome to all the new Captains who have just embarked on their journey to build industrial empires on their islands!


Also our huge thanks goes to all the folks who have been actively translating Captain of industry. It was truly impressive to see so many live streams in all the different languages. We know we did not make it easy for you by pushing lots of stuff last minute, but you did it! All the major contributors should have a thank you note in credits by now for all the languages we added so far. We still have a way to go to polish the UI, spacing & clarity, add missing translations, and also we will be adding more help content, but this won’t be a hard job, thanks to all of you.


We would also like to thank content creators who put their time covering our game. Here are some of the just-released YouTube series:



It’s been a long journey to get here, we (Marek and Filip) have started working on this project more than 6 years ago. We've been pouring our time and resources into the game as we were evolving its mechanics and content. Eventually, we managed to settle on a firm direction and around a year ago we decided to resign from our corporate jobs and work on COI full-time and all this has led to today's release. It has been both scary and exciting journey for us. In case you are interested, we made a small blog post about our beginning approx. a year ago - Our journey.


We are also here to thank our wonderful community that kept supporting us over the last year and who managed to shape the game through their awesome feedback.


And if you encounter any issues, please report them on our bug tracker and we’ll do our best to fix them. Finally, if you have already played the game, consider writing us a review. It means a lot to us.

Image of an island from our discord member - PopularBoat. Building a pyramid of trash as a real commitment to the people on the island - this one is made out of plastic so will last much longer than the ones in Giza.

Roadmap

While this release is a huge milestone, it is just an “early access” – we have so much more planned for you! We would like to share our preliminary roadmap. It is important to note that it is a very high level list for now and if something is missing, it does not mean it won’t be considered. We are learning and re-prioritizing on the go. Examples of that can be the nuclear power and recycling system added recently. If there is something you might like to see, let us know on our Discord or we have this great suggestions site where you can place your suggestion or upvote the ones you like.


Early phase - high priority


Advanced modding support

  • Expand modding support - mod management, APIs, documentation

  • Steam workshop integration

Map editor

  • Enable the community to create their own maps in the in-game editor

UX improvements

  • Keybindings

  • Allow copying & cutting transports

  • Work on intuitiveness and tutorials

Features

  • Trees replanting

Investigate possible integrations

  • Linux, Mac, GeForce Now

Ongoing efforts

Tasks that we will be working on continuously as iterative efforts.


Performance improvement (high priority)

  • keep improving the game to handle more and more complex factories

Quality of life improvements (high priority)

  • keep adding more tools, analytics, shortcuts, and improvements

  • keep working on better intuitiveness

Graphical improvements

  • particles, textures, models, polish

Sounds effects


Future work

Priorities and exact tasks are not set in stone and everything is subject to change based on feedback.


Features

  • Achievements

New content (examples, depends on community feedback)

  • more features for mining

  • more industrial chains

  • more options for settlement - services, housing

  • decorations, customizations

  • power management (power lines, substations)

Improvements

  • Visualize products in unit storages and on truck beds

  • Enable concrete and other custom surfaces on the ground

  • Allow players to choose starting location and position of their first settlement

Areas we would like to explore - subject to community feedback and preference

  • Scenarios / challenges - things that could alter the gameplay in different ways

  • End game mechanics

  • Roads

  • Investigate multiplayer in case of large interest

  • More mechanics around world map




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