Another 2 weeks, another Learning Factory update! This one is especially rich with Splitters, but there's also a nice selection of ambient and cat sounds, among other cool things:

v0.24.156 Released!

New Buildings && Upgrades

• New building: Priority Splitter is an upgrade for Reverse Splitter. It will send items to selected output, until it's clogged, in which case the items will be sent through other exit (suggested by squibs)
• New building: Fertilizer Sprinkler is spreading Fertilizers around the plants in its operational area (suggested by Trichouette)
• New building: Balanced Merger is an upgrade for X-Switcher, it unites two streams of Transporters into one
• New building: Selective Item Manipulator (and its' cousin, Long Selective Item Manipulator) is an upgrade for the Item Splitter, and it grabs any item of your choosing

Gameplay

• New map preset for the Freeplay mode
• Minor changes on the Campaign mode main map
• A little bonus is now waiting those who make it to the Catopia milestone
• Added a system of recommendations on the Research Tree, along with special quests rewarded building prototypes, for completing research projects
• When making price predictions, Machine Learning models now consider cats' Loyalty and Hype level at the moment of a cat's arrival

Graphics && Sound

• Cats make meow when they say text phrases or shop in Stores
• There are now several types of ambient sounds (for fields, forests, production, ocean, underground, and lava) and a dedicated slider for controlling them
• Updated story comic page shown upon completing the Tutorial

QoL && Interface

• Improved interface for Zeppelins, Docks and Routes, made transfer between them easier, Docks now show Routes they're part of
• Statistics window now has a new tab with tables, including cumulative data
• Themed events (Halloween, the Holidays, Programmer's Day and Lunar New Year) can be manually turned on in the Settings
• Minor changes in the Wiki
• Improved Tutorial
• Added an option to sort researcher cats by the highest skill (suggested by MaxFire)
• Added chatGPT-made translations to the Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Japanese languages
• Updated fonts for all languages
• Route searching improved
• Tooltips improved

Techie Stuff

• UI/UX fixes
• Bug fixes (kudos to Trichouette, Pumpkin, Bleachin, MaxFire, CaptainAjax, Hagnk, bloom16night)

Re: Factory

In this section, we're reacting to your bug reports and feedback sent through the in-game report form: Re: Mambo Q: There's no sound since the last update! A: We've tested this issue on our Linux machines, and haven't found anything yet. We need more data to hopefully reproduce it in the future... Re: Bleachin Q: Using the laser collider. Adding gems+ to the row to make gems ++, with it at the top of the list, showed the gems+ in the created part of the crafted from 2 gems row and pushed them out as being made A: In late game, some buildings are capable of crafting items and then use them for crafting higher quality items. To prevent this from happening, you can pause a recipe by clicking respective buttons in the recipes' list. A friendly reminder: you can always chat with us directly on our Discord server. We're using Discord for work, so you'll find many of us there most of the time, don't be a stranger! An even friendlier reminder: don't forget about our collection of items in Steam Points Shop! Sergei the artist makes wonderful factory art to be observed from above, but his works' magic really shows at close-up perspective:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150090/Learning_Factory Don't forget to follow Learning Factory on Steam to get the news about new updates as soon as they're out there

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How to Get More Involved

Going to Early Access is but the first step to glory (and eternal cat happiness). Wanna be part of what happens next? Head to this blog post and learn how to help make the game even more awesome!

Share Your Gameplay and Become Part of KOTOVOD History

Learning Factory needs your help! Record a 10 or more minutes of you playing the game, share a video using any way you see fit, write your name into Learning Factory credits and get a promo cat! Make history here