We just uploaded 0.9.0 to the main Colony Survival branch! It should be available to download and play right now. If it isnt, you might want to verify the integrity of game files. We've released this update a couple of hours before a discount, so if you're here very quickly and you still need to purchase the game, it's in your best interest to wait a moment :) We're planning to give a similar discount somewhere in January. Afterwards, we're probably going to raise the price of the game. This is the largest update weve ever released. It totally overhauls the game. The tech tree has been rebuilt from scratch, and the terrain generation has been drastically enhanced and changed. This means that you will have to start a new savegame. Pre-0.9.0 worlds are incompatible with 0.9.0. This does not mean your pre-0.9.0 worlds are lost though. Right-click Colony Survival in the Steam Library, click properties and go to the betas tab. Here, you will be able to select older versions of the game, suited to the older world youd like to revisit. 0.9.0 contains a gigantic amount of new content. New features, new jobs, new weapons, new monsters, new building blocks and new science. Grenade launchers, steel gliders that are launched into the sky with explosives, glassblowers, threat banners, elevators, tools, traps. Weve adopted new design philosophies which change some of the fundamentals of how the game is played. All old achievements have been removed and replaced with 50 new ones - and these ones shouldnt be unlockable with cheats! Wed like to explain the biggest changes one by one. Before we go into details, I'd like to give one piece of advice to people who are going to jump right into the update: Colony Survival is not an idle game. When certain things feel slow, that's an incentive to expand and recruit more colonists, not an incentive to wait. We've done our best to ensure that all jobs are valuable 'to the end' - we hope you won't ever regret scaling up and setting up a big new production chain.

Outposts

Back in 2018-2019, we worked on 0.7.0 for over a year. The core of the update was multiple colonies: one player could start multiple colonies in the same world. It was probably the most badly implemented feature in the entire game.

• Second colonies had some unique benefits, but they were only available if you travelled a massive distance to other biomes, like the Tropics and the Far East.
• The only ways to get there were by foot, which was very tedious, or by glider, which required players to launch themselves in some kind of strange and confusing VTOL way
• If players wanted to share items between their colonies, they had to use a complicated and slow trading interface
• The only unique benefits of second colonies were new luxury items, which you didnt really need and didnt give access to special or interesting new content

This had the consequence that the vast majority of the playerbase never used the multiple-colonies-feature. Its just too confusing, too boring, and not rewarding enough. We think we fixed all of these issues with the new outposts feature.

• The unique biomes now have semi-randomized locations in the main world. You dont need to leave a big spawn-biome to find them - they are much closer and all around you.
• Gliders have been changed a lot to make them more convenient and fun to use.
• Outposts automatically share their stockpile and science with the main colony and other outposts. No more tedious trading interface.
• Outposts are required to gather unique resources that can only be grown or mined in heaths, swamps, on top of mountains and below mammoth trees. These resources are required to get access to a lot of the mid- to late-game features and technology, making outposts an integral part of the game.

Now, multiple colonies(/outposts) can finally be used practically. Do you spot a fertile, flat field on the other side of the river? Build an outpost there, put down some farms and your main colony instantly has a much-needed boost of food. The world around you has become much more useful, and there is so much more to build than in 0.8.

Threat

In all previous versions of CS, the amount of colonists determined the amount of monsters that assaults your fortress. This has been changed radically; its now one of the least important things. The amount of monsters is now linked to your Threat Level. Some scientific unlocks in the tech tree add large amounts of Threat. Certain blocks, like lockboxes that increase the storage of Colony Points, also add to your Threat Level. Colonists do add some Threat, but its relatively low compared to these others. We believe this makes the game much more fun to play. It has become less important to optimise the efficiency of every individual colonist, and more important to just grow. There is no more risk of a vicious cycle where guards and ammo-crafters are a main cause of the very monsters they are fighting. When you build an outpost, Threat Level is assigned to it proportional to the amount of colonists there. When youve got 90 colonists in your main colony and 10 in the outpost, the outpost ought to receive roughly 10% of the Threat Level. Its possible to change this distribution though. You can unlock Threat Banners, and placing them in your colony basically makes them act like fake colonists, increasing the share of Threat that is assigned to that colony (or outpost). This allows you to build dedicated superfortresses that lure monsters away from other colonies.

A New World

The previous world was designed to be globally interesting, to have very different locations somewhere. The new world is designed to be locally interesting, to have variety and unique features in the more practical distances that most players actually travel. Weve added rivers and enhanced mountains. Places which host unique resources should be easily identifiable. Swamps are filled with tiny streams and ponds. Heaths have patches of sand and purple vegetation

Traps & the Sacred Failsafe

Traps are static blocks that apply an effect to monsters either in front, on top or below them. Most traps do damage, but there are also traps that slow or completely freeze monster movement. Traps can only be reloaded during the day by a trapfixer, so you need to build them in a way that makes them accessible to colonists. Sometimes, things go wrong. You run out of copper ingots, your ammo storage is depleted and monsters walk right into your colony. How do you save yourself? With the Sacred Failsafe! At Sacred Altars, colonists can turn regular meals into Sacred Meals. When theyre consumed, you earn Sacred Points. Youre supposed to gradually build them up in many days, and to use them at the Sacred Failsafe when monsters breach your defences. The Failsafe will then do large amounts of damage to all monsters in the world, starting with the monsters its physically closest to.

New Tech Tree

Since we added the tech tree in 0.3.0, weve mostly been building on top of it. This is the first time weve completely overhauled it. The intention is to make players feel like they are really starting in the Stone Age, with stone tools and mudbricks. You need to expand and improve to unlock metals and all kinds of other technologies. Via the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, players journey to more modern times, with unlocks like printing presses, muskets and tabulating machines. This journey adds all kinds of new jobs, like tanners, alchemists, glassblowers, composters, lathe operators and scribes. At the end of the tech tree, there is Prestige Science. It doesnt have a true functional benefit, but it demands you scale up your production massively. Unlocking tiers of Prestige Science also adds a large amount of Threat, requiring you to upgrade your defences. Of course, you are rewarded with achievements for completing these tiers. Achievement progress is tracked publicly and we are keeping a close eye on it!

Gliders & Elevators

0.7.0 added gliders. To fly the glider, you first had to make it go straight up in the air like a helicopter, and then you had to switch to flying forward. This was strange and not intuitive and required complicated controls. I didnt use them a lot, and a lot of players needed external help to understand them. They now work completely differently. You no longer place gliders, you place glider-launchers. Every time you click on the glider-launcher, you are launched forward from that position in a new glider. The glider is now truly a glider; it no longer has an engine. Youll need to place the glider-launcher on top of a tower or mountain to make the best use of it. After youve unlocked steel & gunpowder, you can research steel gliders. These are launched explosively, allowing them to gain a lot of altitude on their own. These arent the only form of player transport. Weve also added elevators and horizontal elevators, allowing you to build shafts and rails in straight lines and to automatically travel from A to B.

The Merchant & Colony Points

In 0.7.0, you had to distribute luxury items to your colonists to ensure their happiness. This system contained complicated math and weird equilibriums, and we changed it in 0.8.0. There, you earned Colony Points by distributing those luxury items. It was less focused on punishment, and more on earning rewards. But the distribution happened automatically, making it feel quite out of control. In 0.9.0, you earn Colony Points by deliberately selling items at the merchant. These Points can then be used in a myriad of ways. You can purchase items at the merchant as well. Resources from other biomes will be necessary before you can unlock Outposts, and in that period, their only source is the merchant. The Points are also deeply integrated into the tech tree, and youll often need a significant amount of them. Last but not least, weve still got the Point Upgrades from 0.8. Raising the colonist capacity limit and the banner safe zone range requires increasing amounts of Points. The merchant offers a lot of flexibility to players. You are free to choose in what way you will earn Colony Points, and how to spend them. Will you be very self-reliant and immediately build outposts everywhere? Or will you exchange your own luxury goods for resources like tin and zinc?

Crafting Times & Tools

In previous versions of CS, colonists couldnt save their crafting progress. They had to finish the item they were making, or the ore they were mining, or start over completely. This meant practically that we were limited to ~15 second crafting times. To make things more expensive in terms of labour time, we added lots of small parts like copper nails and iron rivets. To craft one advanced item, youd need a lot of these smaller parts. This made it a lot harder to keep track of production chains. Weve removed this limitation. Colonists can now work for 180 seconds on a 300-second recipe, go to bed, and finish the remaining 120 seconds of work in the morning. Weve used this to remove pointless ingredients and streamline the production chain. It makes sense for certain items, like crossbow and printing presses, to take more than 15 seconds of work. Long crafting times can be annoying at the start, so weve kept them fairly short there. But in the late game, when youre commanding many hundreds of colonists, it helps to keep recipes sensible and to keep a clear overview of your production. Its also an extra incentive to expand. Tools are a way to speed up these longer crafting times. Tool use is not universal though. Some colonists cant use tools, others cant craft without tools. Some jobs need special tools. The default tool type has tiers going from stone to steel. Each tier has a unique durability, cost and crafting speed. Some jobs can use all the tiers, some only use the first tiers, others only the final tiers. Colonists need to visit the tool shop to grab new tools. At this tool shop, you can set different limits determining how many tools colonists should leave in the stockpile.

Harvesters & Sources

Weve added a new type of job. A harvester jobblock recruits the colonist, and that colonist has to visit nearby sources for his work. Weve currently got a scribe visiting scrolls shelves, a researcher visiting bookcases, and a farmer visiting wisteria plants. Instead of rows of colonists working at rows of jobblocks, youll now have to build custom libraries! The sources automatically regenerate over time. A ratio of 1 harvester to 10 sources ensures a sustainable long term balance.

And much, much more

Weve added and changed too much to describe all of it here. There are now monoculars which actually make you zoom in when you equip them in the hotbar. When you do the same with astrolabes, they point you to nearby biomes. 0.9.0 has guards that do poison damage, and weapons with area-of-effect damage. Try the game to encounter all new content and other differences!

Last but not least

Over three months ago, we started the beta of 0.9.0. Roughly 300 players volunteered. We've received enormous amounts of feedback and used it to shape 0.9.0 as best as we could. We're grateful to everybody who participated. Thanks to Lady Kathleen who made the world which is the new main menu background. Thanks to Kenovis, who has worked hard to update mods for 0.9.0 - I really recommend the chisel mod! Thanks to Aanze, Toran, Krydax and Cramm and all the others who left their detailed feedback in #test-long-impressions. Thanks to Meowzers, who pushed 0.9.0 to its limits by building massive colonies with many thousands of colonists - he is single-handedly responsible for the 500-in-game-days achievement. Thanks to Vobbert for his years of testing, advising and moderating. Thanks to Boneidle, PatateNouille, Ardandal and Zeta-Primette for their longtime participation in the Discord. Thanks to Chicago for all the encouragement he gave us, and thanks to Bog for keeping our egos in check! Finally, thanks to the near 300 others that we sadly can't all name, but whose help has been very valuable. This is a big moment for Colony Survival. We hope the update provides you with many hours of entertainment. We're looking forward to hearing from you - on Discord, here in the comments and on the Steam Forum. We'd love to see the worlds you've made. Veel plezier in 0.9.0! Reddit // Twitter // YouTube // Website // Discord

[ 2022-12-22 15:01:08 CET ] [ Original post ]