Captain's Diary #54: Bridges, stacker, sandbox and more in Update 4
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
Ahoy everyone! Captain Filip is back, and I’m excited to share more information about what’s coming in Update 4. To recap, the update is scheduled for March 9. Since this post only covers the stuff we haven’t shown you yet, here’s a quick recap of everything else that’s coming with Update 4:
Tier 2 locomotives and wagons, waypoint stations [CD#51]
Amphibious trucks and excavators [CD#51]
Path-finding for ships (unrestricted docks placement) [CD#51]
Quality of life: idle statistics, train replacement, train line coloring, truck filters [CD#53]
Better mod support (manifest files, dependencies, advanced UI) [CD#53]
Improved performance [CD#52]
Bridges (in this post)
Stacker tower (in this post)
Sandbox (in this post)
New map (in this post)
As we’ve mentioned a few times already, alongside Update 4 we’re also releasing a Train Expansion DLC. Trains are already in the base game, so this is an auxiliary expansion for those who want to support further development or just seek something extra. More information about the expansion is in our previous post [CD#53].
With that, let’s jump into the awesome stuff coming in Update 4!
Bridges
Bridges are finally ready for a showcase! They’ve been a pretty big undertaking, but they turned out magnificent. We still get taken aback every time we see these beauties stretching over valleys.
Building bridges will feel familiar if you’ve laid train tracks before. Pick a start point, move your cursor to the destination, and we’ll auto-assemble a sequence of pieces to get you there. The best part: you can copy-paste bridges and include them in your blueprints like anything else.
A bridge is a modular surface: you choose what lanes go on the deck, and in what order, independently of the bridge itself. A small bridge offers two lanes: road or track. Wider bridges give you more space. Road-only, train-only, or a hybrid bridge - it’s your call.
Update 4 comes with the Truss bridge and the Cable-stayed bridge. These bridges are built from smaller pieces, and each type comes with 40 different pieces to make sure you have enough flexibility. Every piece was handmade by our artists, including LODs.
As we mentioned, Update 4 also brings amphibious vehicles. These are essential, because otherwise bridge building would be impossible. In CoI there’s no magic terrain tool - your fleet of excavators has to do the job. We also disabled quick-build for bridges, because that would make them OP. All of this means amphibious vehicles play a crucial role in bridge construction, and even in preparing bridge landing areas.
Stacker tower
In Update 1, we introduced the stacker. The plan was to provide an automated dumping solution. However, it became clear very quickly, even during internal testing, that the stacker was super limited. Unless you placed it on top of a mountain, it became obsolete fast, and having to rebuild it was more babysitting than letting the trucks do their job. At the time, we simply weren’t sure what a better solution could be without making something overly complicated.
Then we made another internal prototype: a rotating stacker tower. It could dump more stuff in a circular radius, which was nice. But it still acted more like temporary storage than true, continuous dumping automation. What we actually wanted was for materials to arrive on belts or via train, and then get dumped automatically, without involving trucks for the last mile.
And then, third time’s the charm: we made a final version of the stacker that ticked all the boxes we wanted. We call it a stacker tower (my internal codename is MotherStacker). It’s a chunky one, but it provides a very solid dumping range and distance.
Its biggest strength, though, is its rail extension system. Once the stacker has nowhere to dump, it will drive forward on its support rail to dump farther.
You can also set the stacker to automatically request new rails to be built in front of it, which makes the operation fully automated. This means you no longer need to move the stacker around and rebuild the feeding belts. It’ll just keep going on its own.
The plan for now is that the old stacker is staying in the game for backwards save compatibility but we might pull it out in future updates as the new tower has superseded it.
Sandbox
For some time, we were trying to avoid introducing a sandbox mode into CoI. We were worried it would ruin the experience, especially for new players. But here’s the thing: CoI has extraordinarily long gameplay and complex mechanics, and I’ll admit we underestimated how much people need an experimental environment. Content creators, modders, and players designing blueprints are all critical use cases. So we changed our approach, and Update 4 will come with a sandbox mode, plus a few extra commands in the base game.
The new sandbox mode can be started directly from the main game screen. It gives you everything researched, infinite resources, and infinite product source/sink entities. This means you can design and experiment however you want. This mode will always mark your save as sandbox, and it can’t be reverted.
For folks who desperately need to convert an existing regular session into a sandbox, there will be a console command: enable_sandbox. This is also non-reversible, and it will mark your save file as sandbox.
We’re also adding console commands to overclock game speed and to toggle fog (even outside the sandbox mode). We don’t hide increased game speeds because we want you to clock more game hours :) We hide them because we simply don’t have confidence that those higher speeds are smooth on the average CPU out there. So now it’s at least behind a command for those who really need it.
New archipelago map
We’re also excited to bring you a new map in Update 4! The design only became possible thanks to our new ship pathfinding, and hopefully it’ll give you plenty of opportunities to build some cool-looking bridges. Like all our islands, it comes with several starting locations, so you’ll get some variety in difficulty. Also, this one is our biggest map yet in terms of total playable area!
Mod support
As I mentioned in the previous post, we put quite a bit of effort into reworking the mod management UI and manifest files for Update 4. The goal is to provide a much better, more stable modding experience in the long run. These changes will also make sure players are in control of when a particular mod gets loaded, and modders will be able to surface more info and set up dependencies.
Mods configuration system
To expand mod support further, we’re also introducing a JSON-based configuration feature for mods. This allows mods to be configured before the game starts, without mods having to implement anything custom. Another big advantage is that mods that don’t add content but do need config can be safely unloaded from the game. Until now, that wasn’t really possible, because our config system was pretty rigid.
We now also surface the mod changelog in the UI. If a mod has a changelog.txt file in its root folder, we show it to the player in the detail window.
One last aspect I want to address: we know CoI Hub is still behind, and I’m sorry about that. Last year we got delayed by introducing the translation tool, because translations are essential for our international community, and the previous tool was hurting the translation experience. We’re definitely going to invest in CoI Hub this year, especially now that we’ve introduced manifests. We also made an extra hire recently to work on design for both the game and CoI Hub.
Our timeline / roadmap
We’ve noticed there’s been quite a bit of confusion about what features we’re planning for CoI, and how long we intend to keep working on it. We usually stay away from roadmaps because we prefer to be agile, and anything we ever float ends up being taken for granted as “confirmed.” However, we also realize that having no information at all isn’t doing us justice either.
So we’ve put together a very tentative, preliminary list of things we aim to work on, along with a list of all the awesome stuff we’ve already done. The goal is to debunk some claims that we’re “doing nothing,” which can be especially confusing for newcomers :) You can check the roadmap here: https://www.captain-of-industry.com/roadmap
We still expect CoI to be under development for quite a few years, and it’s not something we’re ashamed of. As the roadmap shows, we’ve delivered massive updates year after year. For us, this isn’t a race. We’re focusing on quality, pushing the envelope, and doing everything we can to move as fast as possible, especially given how broad CoI’s feature set is.
We’ve also updated our original Early Access guidance on Steam. Initially we had to put some date there, and nothing is easier than estimating software project timelines :) On top of that, we ended up doing a bunch of extra things we never even intended to do before 1.0, but here we are :)
We’re grateful for all your support, and we’ll do everything we can to keep delivering an amazing game. And to our fanbase: thank you. Without you, we wouldn’t be here.
Compatibility
I’d like to confirm that Update 4 saves will be backwards compatible with the current version on Steam. We’ll also keep Update 3 available as a Steam legacy version for anyone who’s stuck with existing or abandoned mods.
Train Expansion keys
One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post: we’ll provide Train Expansion DLC keys to all our early backers who pledged at Commodore and Admiral tiers. We also expect to launch the expansion with a discount.
And content creators, no matter their size, are always welcome to reach out to us for keys for the base game or the expansion via our form linked in our press section.
Community spotlight
Recently, It came to our attention that player joe8353 has achieved the deepest hole in Captain of industry, whopping -1945 tiles deep (or nearly 4 km!). He started his playthrough in Update 2 on the Crater map and played for 82594 years with a mining rate of 136k rock per year (24 lanes of transport and some help using unity). Congratulations for the world record!
