[All changes discussed in this blog concern dev branch 0.7.0, which is not publicly available yet] During the weekend, Zun completely redid the player movement code. We've had an issue for years where players would sometimes glitch into the ground. This update should fix that problem. Another big change is the addition of a new tabbed menu next to the stockpile and science. It's the Colony Tab, and it allows you to change the name of your colony, invite other players to be co-owners (or leaders!) of your colony and to recruit large amounts of colonists.
We've had to make another major decision this week. What's the relationship between the biomes going to be? Are they all on "equal footing", with similar capabilities and opportunities? Or will it be more similar to the world of The Hunger Games, where exploited districts serve the wealthy Capitol? Both systems have benefits and drawbacks. 'Equality' is more 'free form': players are free to choice where to build their biggest colony. The end-game (19th/20th century tech) will be available in every biome. But we're afraid 'equal biomes' will cause the game to become repetitive and boring. Colonists in every biome will need similar amounts of happiness items, so the challenge of building a 2nd/3rd/4th colony will not be very different from the challenge of building your first colony. Trade between colonies will probably become extremely complex, because the same kind of items need to be spread to every biome (tea needs to go from the east to north/west/south/center, coffee needs to go from the south to north/west/east/center, etc.).
Distant biomes serving the center versus biomes on equal footing So we're drawn to a different solution: inequality. Colonists in distant biomes should need less happiness items compared to the central biome. Colonies in distant biomes serve as outposts for the capital in the central biome, providing it with exotic happiness items and resources needed for modern tech. To prevent people from ignoring the central biome (with its 'expensive' colonists), end-game content is only available in the center. We aren't 100% sure, but we mostly believe that 'the inequality option' provides players with better, more enjoyable gameplay. We did ask our Discord community to vote on the options. Here are the options and the results:
There's potentially a third option, where there's still inequality between the capital and the outposts, but where the capital can be built in any biome. It sounds good in theory, but will delay 0.7.0 even further, and it makes it more difficult to streamline the tech tree. We haven't made any definitive decisions yet. What's your favorite? Leave a comment here or join the Discord and share your feedback there. As usual, here are the changelogs of the dev branch. There was a new build every workday, this week!

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