We've been making plans for 0.7.0/0.7.1/0.7.2 for many months, and we've finally agreed on a rough outline of all the changes we want to make to the game. We're still in a very early stage, so we can take your feedback into account! We'd love to know what you all think of the plans.

1.) Colonist requirements

The only thing currently required to recruit a colonist is a bunch of food. This is relatively hard to get for new colonies, but larger colonies can often recruit many dozens of colonists simultaneously. We'd like to scale the requirements as the colony grows. Colonists will be cheaper for small colonies, to speed up the first stage of setting up a colony. We've heard many players say that the early game is pretty slow and boring, and that it gets way more interesting later on. We'd like to help players get to that stage faster.

We'd like to increase the colonist recruitment cost for larger colonies. Apart from food, other items like clothing, tools and a small amount of coins could become required. We'd like to increase the cost gradually. Colonist 250 should be more expensive than colonist 150, which should be more expensive than colonist 50.

2.) New world generation

The world generation has barely changed in more than a year. We'd like to put a lot of effort in a more interesting world. Different mountains, new cliffs, random fields of wheat or flowers, interesting "sub-biomes" like swamps or an oasis in the desert, etc.

In every direction, you should eventually find an interesting different "top-biome" where a new colony can be started. There should be an arctic area in the north, a tropic biome in the south, a "far east" obviously in the east, and a "new world" to the west.

Each of these biomes should have distinctive items and resources. This makes sure every colony has a unique purpose. Every biome should have special items in each of these three categories:

• Local items/food like rice in the far east and potatoes in the new world.
  
• Resources for weapons. For example, poison plants for poisonous projectiles in the tropics, freeze missiles from the arctic and obsidian in the new world for powerful armor penetrating projectiles.
  
• Resources for more modern technologies, like rubber, cobalt for batteries and 'importanium' for energy production.

• Monsters with more HP. The strongest monsters are now killed in one shot by the matchlock gun. We'd like to add "boss monsters" that are perhaps 10 times stronger.
  
• Armored monsters. This allows us to add more differences between projectiles, because they will now also require armor penetration.
  
• Monsters that fire projectiles at guards and the player. It would be nice if the monsters have some way of fighting back from the middle of a maze. They shouldn't have a very long range, so a properly designed defense can keep your colonists save.

• Guards that do armor penetration damage, with for example obsidian projectiles.
  
• Guards that fire poisonous projectiles, to damage monsters over time.
  
• Guards that fire freeze projectiles, to slow down monsters.
  
• Guards with area of effect damage, to damage multiple monsters simultaneously