Pathros

Last weeks blog announced a pretty dramatic plan to uncouple the amount of monsters and unhappiness from the amount of currently recruited colonists. We still had some questions about the precise implementation though, and we received a lot of comments to help us with that! Were now thinking of determining a Civilization Level that is linked to multiple factors like unlocked tech, amount of colonists recruited, and monster magnets, special monuments that quickly raise your Civilization Level. These monuments take quite some time and resources to craft, and when theyre placed in the world they rapidly raise your Civilization Level. When theyre removed, the monuments are destroyed (so you cant rapidly place and remove them without cost), and your Civilization Level will drop again. A high Civilization Level will allow you to unlock new tech and continue your progress, but it will also attract more monsters and increase the demand for happiness items.

Zun has continued revamping the UI. Its going to be a very substantial update that will add new UI features, reorganize older features and improve the look of a lot of UI elements.



Welcome to 2020, Part II

This part of the blog will concern wider societal problems that are certainly tied to us and our work indirectly, but are not directly related. If you strictly want game-related updates, stop reading here.

This week, we arrived in the second half of 2020. We dont want to adopt any controversial viewpoints, but I guess we can all be in agreement that up to this point, in regards to world events, the year has been intense, suboptimal and worrisome.

The contrast got particularly big when I visited the Waterloopbos last Sunday (see pic above). Large parts of the Netherlands lie below sea level, so they need decent protection or they will flood. Currently, we mostly rely on computer simulations to test old and new coast defenses, but in the 20th century we built physical scale models and tested them with real water. The Waterloopbos was one such place where these models were built. Heres Tom Scott visiting it right before Covid-19:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFkoLYrJGCM
Apparently, according to Dutch law the government must ensure our water defenses are prepared for weather events that are so bad they only occur once every 10,000 years. At the Waterloopbos, technical experts made sure our country was ready for that.

I can be pretty skeptical about the Dutch government, its not perfect, but not once in my life have I feared flooding and after 27 years of inhabiting and roaming this country I havent got a single complaint in regards to water management. There have been a couple of instances where water rose to a high point and floodplains that seldomly saw action got filled, but that only increased my faith that things are managed decently.

When I walked through the Waterloopbos, I noticed a skilled level of engineering and knowledge of water that far exceeds my own. I have no reason to doubt them, and I dont know any Dutch person who does. Its not a politicized, partisan issue. Companies dont have to make statements about it. Flooding is bad, we need well-funded experts to stop it, and thats what was organized. And thus, we dont have to worry about it and can focus on other things, like developing games.

Thats the sanity that I was used to. We reach an agreement about which risks we want to prevent, we assign a bunch of experts to do so, problem solved, and we can all focus on our daily lives.

Things seem to be going a lot different in 2020. Perhaps its because weve grown older and its par for the course to realize things arent perfect. Perhaps were exaggerating problems that have always existed. But we feel like theres a wider consensus that things are going off the rails.



Covid-19 seems to be a massive problem. In Europe and the US, over 300,000 people have died, despite invasive and disruptive measures that heavily disrupt the economy and peoples well-being. This situation was not inevitable: countries like South Korea (282 deaths), Mongolia (0 deaths), Taiwan (7 deaths) and Vietnam (0 deaths) prove that its possible to successfully and quickly contain and prevent the further spread of the virus. Key ingredients seem to be a quick response time, the widespread adoption of facemasks and large amounts of testing.

The societal and economic destabilization, compounded by pre-existing problems, seems to have reached a boiling point in the US. Legitimate issues have led to peaceful protests, but also to violent riots, destruction and increased polarization and partisanship. To a lesser degree, these same issues are spilling over to Europe.

Were seriously worried about these issues. And were trying to look for a root cause. Strong systems dont collapse randomly: at first, they get hollowed out. Did our systems get hollow? Why? How hollow are they? Can they be fixed, and how? These are very complex questions, and we dont have all the answers. We dont believe any single person, party or movement has them either. Were probably going to require a whole lot of listening and talking, and as little partisanship as we can manage.

One of the things we believe is relevant is a transition from traditional media to new media. Releasing Colony Survival gave us some experience with that. If youre interested in hearing about that, well write about it in a future Friday Blog. But this is probably already getting quite controversial, so let us know how you feel about this blog first! Do you worry about the direction the world is heading in? Should we be saying anything about this subject at all? Tell us, here or on Discord!

Bedankt voor het lezen!

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