Here is a small hot-patch fixing issues you've been reporting in the last few weeks.
Firstly, the problem where a settler would disappear when given orders while they are using a stair should be fixed for good. As it's a very elusive bug, I added a fail-safe just in case: if the bug is still present (and I really doubt it), the game will automatically fix it when you save or switch to combat mode and leave a note telling you it did. Please, make sure to still report it when it happens.
Secondly, settlers should be much better at selecting which "need" they need to satisfy first. Hunger and Thirst when very high will take the priority over sleep and other "non lethal" needs. Assuming a settler has all their needs maxed, or close to, it will eat / drink before going to sleep now. This should prevent settlers from dying of hunger during their sleep and make, on average, recovery from a bad situation a tad easier.
There are a few more balance and fixes in the change-log below.
Note:
My internet connection has been very unreliable in the last few days. To a point that I am currently forced to use my (capped) mobile internet to upload this build and write this very post. I suspect it somehow has something to do with everyone in my country using way more internet than usual due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Point is, I might not be as responsive to threads and queries as I usually am. Don't worry, I'll still address any problem, question or suggestion, it just might take a bit more time.
Changelog
AI: Settlers are better at selecting which need to satisfy first (hunger & thirst now take the priority over fun, sleep and sickness)
Balance: People who are sleeping have their hunger and thirst needs grow a bit more slowly
Balance: Farms take less time to get ready (divided time needed to "build a tile" by 2)
Fixed: AI logic issue which could prevent a farmer from building a farm tile as he keeps getting interrupted by needs
Fixed: By night, sleep would override other needs even when those are more urgent to deal with
Fixed: Giving orders from the one map layer to the other was unreliable (it was checking collisions for the wrong layer)
Fixed: A case where loading an old savegame, under specific conditions and from the start menu, could crash the game (couldn't reproduce, but got a report)
Fixed: Rare issue where a settler could disappear while using stairs if they get interrupted by another order
Fixed: Rare issue where a settler could duplicate itself (this bug and the one above are technically the same and trigger under the same set of conditions)
Faction Warfare Update
Here is the last major update for our 0.6 branch, introducing the faction warfare system!
While the previous update added the ability for you to claim resource production centers on the map, this one is doing the same for other factions. It's introducing numerous new late game systems while balancing the economy. I also included a few community requested features, for good measure. As usual, the following article is going to detail the main new features and changes. You can find the full change-log at the bottom. Let's dive in!
Faction Warfare
As the name implies, the other in-game factions woke up from their slumber and can take control of production centers. After a few in-game weeks (so you don't have to rush toward it either), they will start to build up strength and gradually take over nearby production centers. Generally speaking, factions will avoid confrontation with each other unless there's nothing left for them to grab in their sphere of influence. As such, you don't have really to worry about them attacking you until you're ready. I added a bunch of help menus and screens to explain the system organically. But, still, here's a quick summary.
Each faction has a bunch of variables defining how aggressive it is, how quickly it growths, if it's going to mass troops or just spam small groups. It's not yet visible in the user interface, but their description tends to be accurate. They will try to expand as much as they can without interfering with anyone else's business. When it's not possible anymore, factions who are neutral or hostile to you (or other groups) might declare war on you and send a squad against one of your production centers. Once locked into a war, you can't buy your way to peace for a whole week, but they might still offer peace beforehand.
Friendly factions (+50 rep) will never attack you. You might want to look at the rest of this article before thinking that you can stay safe forever, though.
That being said, you can defend yourself. Productions centers under your control can be fortified from the world map. And you can take the war to other factions by attacking their settlements. Again, attacking a location under someone else's control is a declaration of war, and you won't be able to make peace for seven days.
Abominations
This is, again, very late game content. Once the faction warfare has been up and running for a few weeks, there's a chance for a specific world event to trigger. You'll be warned, and get a specific help popup when it happens.
Simply put, a new faction will appear on the map, it will be overpowered and hostile to everyone else. They will relentlessly attack other factions' settlements (yours included) and periodically send raids against your base. The only way to get rid of them is to send a very well armed raiding party against their "nest". Even with top of the line weapons and armors, you'll have to send multiple groups to their death, or wait for their forces to deplete.
Due to time constraints, those are fairly basic monsters for now. I'll gradually make them more interesting and unique over time in both layers (world map and base level).
Balance
I spent some time balancing various aspects of the game to make sure that the late game isn't as trivial as before. The main problem, in my opinion, is that money was incredibly easy to generate due to merchants being way too generous. From now on, merchants will buy stuff at 40-50% of the value, down from 80%. That alone, coupled with the fact that you'll have to keep other factions happy and still reinforce your settlements, makes money a much rarer commodity. To make that a bit more fair, requesting caravans no longer cost reputation points.
Also, farms require less water, and cattle needs much less wheat to live, but starving cattle can no longer get pregnant. Generally speaking, they will spam less jobs, leaving room for your settlers to do other stuff. Random caches and loot you can find when you have an expedition running is also much less likely to contain tons of rare weapons/armors.
Oh, and taking over production centers now requires the "Logistics" tech which is just after radio in the exploration tree. It's to prevent you from bum rushing production centers before both you and the AI are ready, and it'll also display a relevant help screen.
User Interface
Nothing major, mostly stuff you've been requesting. There's a new "mail" icon under the game-log, clicking it will open a menu displaying the last 100 messages. I also added a specific right-click menu for "seed" type items showing what they do, the plant's health and stats. Basically now every single inventory item can be right-clicked for proper contextual information. The expedition menu, when selecting settlers will also show their equipment, making the process a lot less cumbersome.
Oh, last but not least, the save/load menu takes much, much less time to show up now. It no longer load all the screenshots in advance, which was causing the delay when you have many save-games.
Events
Outside of the "abominations" related event, there are two new ones to shake up the late game a bit.
Firstly, factions can get a leadership change. It will change the leader's portrait, but more importantly, it will reset your relation with said faction to neutral. Which means that buying your security is no longer a 100% sure fire way to avoid conflict. On the other hand, it doesn't discriminate, it might very well make a very hostile faction neutral toward you.
Secondly, occasionally, prisoners might escape from another faction's base and demand asylum. There are a few ways to play that one out. You can send the prisoners back for money or reputation, while accepting them might either cost you reputation or even cause a war.
Bug Fixes & Misc
There were very few bugs to fix for once which is kind of a good thing. I still found a couple possible crashes (generally very specific ones), and a few behavioral problems. Namely, I found 2 cases where a settler wouldn't properly assign themselves a job or couldn't properly queue a nearby one. It should be making people a bit more productive. The rest is mostly cosmetic stuff. However, due to the size of this update and it's nature (late game content), I fully expect you to find new and interesting bugs, especially when it comes to the factions and events. As usual, those will be fixed via hot-patches.
Another massively important feature, at least on an engine level, is that we can now run multiple events simultaneously. In practice, it means that you can ask multiple factions to send you trade caravans at the same time. Also, the game is no longer waiting for a particular event to finish before firing another, as such a trade caravan might be attacked by wildlife, or you might get 2 raids near simultaneously.
Don't worry, the usual limiters apply, so you shouldn't get overwhelmed, especially in the early game.
Save Compatibility
Well, yes, it's technically compatible with the previous version. By that, I mean that the game won't crash & burn the second you try to load an old save. That being said, it also means that every single faction will have the exact same behavior. Changes in the tech tree and general pacing might make some features and feedback a bit confusing as well. If your save had an event running, that event will most likely be a bit buggy, but it shouldn't impact the game much as far as I can tell.
On a related note, adding/modifying events or changing a crafting station's recipes no longer requires a new save or to destroy/rebuild the station for those changes to apply. Those were recurrent problems when updating the game. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to kill old save-games in major future updates, but it'll make the transition less annoying for those updates that don't technically need to restart the game from scratch.
Personal Notes
To be honest, writing this whole faction warfare layer has been a real pain, and testing it properly takes ages (to a point that I'm sure I missed some issues). Still, I'm done writing the whole interface/system. From a gameplay perspective, it's still a bit basic, especially on the diplomatic front, as I couldn't fit everything I wanted in there without delaying this update much further. But, improving upon the current system, adding new events and behaviors is now quite easy. As such, you can be sure that I will continue improving it in parallel to writing the new 0.7 branch.
That being said, outside of the ability to manually control your raids (which is still planned, don't worry, there's still a few more things to finish first), this 0.6 branch should give you a decent idea of the final product. It's technically 70% base building, 30% faction warfare in the endgame. With a bit of imagination, you can see where I'm going with that. Assuming you'd enable "story mode" in the final product, you would have to conquer and maintain specific locations on the map, pacify other factions, and build some high level, high demand building to get you out of this hell-hole.
Another interesting thing I noticed while writing this update, is that my engine is perfectly able to handle the addition of removal of factions "on the fly". So while it's not yet possible to just invade the main base of other factions, it's something I will be able to add in the future. Heck, we could even have (occasionally) purely procedurally generated factions showing up under specific conditions.
Note to Regulars & Early Followers
One of my early promises was to allow you to manually control your raiding parties. And given this 0.6 branch's focus, it's fair that most of you would have expected that feature to be included here. Yet, it's not there. Let me explain why.
There's no technical problem preventing me from adding this feature. The game is perfectly able to "add another scene where the player is locked in combat mode in a specific map", well it's not like it's a "switch" I'm purposefully disabling either. Code needs to be written and all that, but it's not a show stopper. The problem is two fold. Firstly the map generator is still extremely basic. Sure, I could send you in a map and do that stuff, but that would be yet another roads + buildings map you've seen over and over again, despite supposedly being in a mine, a farm or a commercial center. Secondly, the combat AI is currently absolutely terrible. I mean, it's serviceable enough in the context of a base builder (and even then, it's still way too easy to exploit or make it bug out), but in what would amount to an active pause "xcom-like" game, where you don't have to worry about anything else but the combat itself, there's no way a semi-decent player could lose.
If I was going to enable this feature now, it would mean that most players would always win any encounter unless I was going to spam dozens of enemies, wrecking the balance in the process. Also such a major feature would be made public with extremely underwhelming maps. It would completely negate any hype or following I got making it public in the first place, and no amount of post announcement updates would fix the damage. And as much as I love all of you, adding another "not yet ready for prime time" feature would cost me big time.
Let me finish 0.7 first, to make the base building part really interesting, and then 0.8 will be (partly) dedicated to the procedural map generation and combat AI stuff so I can add this feature properly. I know, it's barely believable for a "steam dev" to know what they are doing, but I do actually have a plan and a road-map!
Full Change-log
After The Collapse: 0.7x Roadmap
With the 0.6 branch nearly complete, I think it's a great time to talk about our next 0.7 branch :)
As usual with those road-map type posts, everything I write here is to be taken with a grain of salt. The general goal will stay the same, but the implementation details may vary. I may delay some of it, I might add completely unrelated things, and so on. Also, do not forget that the following post explains what 0.7.x will look like at the end of that cycle, 0.7.0 itself will just pave the way for those features to be included. And as usual, I'm skipping the usual "raw content" (more stuff to build), UI improvements and bug fixes.
So, the goal in 0.6 was to fully integrate the world map, add factions, the ability to loot locations, take control of production centers and have said factions fight for control of the city. Most of that has been achieved. The next update, available in a couple weeks, should complete that cycle. Sure, the strategic layer is super limited right now, but all the elements are there. While it took much longer than planned to develop, 0.6 improved the UI and stability tenfold. That's less time I would have otherwise been spent in 0.9. I know I'm partial, but I really think that the 0.6 branch is where ATC moved away from being a very "niche" and rough game to a proper base builder with it's own identity.
Global 0.7 Goals
While 0.6 was mostly about the macro elements, 0.7 is going to focus on your settlers themselves. The general idea is to add a more detailed medical/health system, make the settlers interact with each other, add trainable animals, make moods less binary, add procedurally generated illnesses, and so on. In a way, 0.6 added more raw content, more or less in a linear way. 0.7 will try to widen your options and give you something to do when waiting for a tech or a mission to get done.
Settler to Settler interactions
So far, settlers have mostly been automatons who aren't really interacting with each other. My engine is missing a framework allowing 2 or more settlers to exchange information or "run code" on each other. Sure, we have the hospital zone where a doctor can indeed interact with a patient, but it's made in a way that is really impractical and can't really be ported to do something else. Well, one of the main goal in 0.7 is to address just that.
It will start small, with settlers stopping a few seconds to discuss with each other (giving mood +/- modifiers) and adding a network of friendships in the process. But, the principle goes far beyond that simple example. Many of the planned features rely in a way or another on that system.
Improved Mood System
In the current system, settlers are prone to violent mood swings. Remove a bed too many and it's the apocalypse, give them a decent meal, and they are in heaven. And, as much as I hate to use the word "realistic" when it comes to describe game systems, in this particular case, we need something a tad more realistic. The main issue here is that changes are immediate: eat good food, poof, +20 mood for 10 minutes.
Instead, I think it would be more interesting to make the changes gradual. Our example food would still have the same stats but, instead of immediately making the settler's mood gauge go up by 20 points, it would make the mood increase gradually until it reaches that value. This way, assuming someone is very happy for various reasons, no matter what horror might come next, it'll take some time for them to really get depressed. And ofc, the opposite is true too.
It has interesting implications. Firstly, the "happy" and "depressed" traits would no longer be running for a fixed duration. Instead they would just stay active while someone's mood is above or below given thresholds. I could even start implementing specific behaviors whenever happiness gets critical for too long. Secondly, the speed at which mood improves or get worse can be decoupled and vary on an individual basis. An "iron willed" settler could have their mood worsen at a very slow rate, while positive changes would be applied faster.
On average, the happiness system should become less "random". Settlers will also get their own personalities instead of being carbon copies. Lastly, with violent mood swings eradicated, I can toy with that system a lot more without being at a constant risk of making the game impossible to play.
Pets and Animal Taming
Dogs and tamed spiders ftw! Basically.
Well, there's a bit more to it, of course. And it's part of the interaction system discussed above (works for animals). You'll be able to acquire dogs (and later, other animals) through the usual means, which, in turn, your settlers can breed and adopt (or, well, eat, if you're that kind of person). Pets will follow their owners around, provide some bonus happiness, and depending on their data, will try to defend them against attackers.
Additionally, some wild creatures might also become tamable. While i'm not entirely set on the "how" exactly, the general idea to give the ability to tag an animal with a "tame" job. An animal handler will then try to approach it with some food. If everything goes well, they'll go back home together and the animal will be put in a specific pasture for further training. If anything goes badly, the animal will go back to a feral state and attack whoever is nearby. Assuming everything works, it'll be treated as a pet which can be adopted the same way dogs can.
Better Medical System
I'm not very interested in adding a detailed system to handle localized damages and all that organ transplant stuff. Rimworld already does it better than I can hope for. However, I'm very interested in adding proper illnesses, procedurally generated ones to be precise. It's not that difficult on a technical level. Pick a transmission method, a list of traits/modifiers for each stage of the disease, a few additional variables to determine its spread rate, lethality, resistance to antibiotics and so on. Add a random name generator on top of it and you get your disease. Well, of course, it has to be implemented in code, but it's not really a far fetched principle.
Of course, while some illnesses might go away on their own, others might not. And you'd need a way to find a cure. Here again, it would be created dynamically, more or less the same way you conduct research. Infected patients go to the hospital, doctors take samples for analysis until they can find a cure, which can be produced assuming you have the necessary components.
Non Lethal Combat and Prisoners
Well, it's self explanatory. Still, out of everything listed, this feature is going to be the most difficult to implement.
It should be possible, especially with melee and pipe weapons, to have combatants falling unconscious instead of straight up dying. With that in mind, they could be made prisoners and healed by a doctor. Once back on their feet, prisoners could either be freed/sold for reputation/money or used as a cheap labor force, under the supervision of guards. This addition should give the player opportunities to play the game in different ways (standard colony, raiders, prison).
It would also be interesting if raiders were using the same methods, and were able to capture some of your settlers for a ransom. That, it's going to be a tad more difficult to implement, but it's an idea worth exploring.
Developer's Notes
Of course, I might experiment with other, unrelated systems. I'd like to overhaul tree growth, especially as fire handling is planned down the line. Adding the much requested roofs would be nice as well, so we can start working on that radiation stuff. Of course, I'll need to update some parts of the UI to deal with prisoners and animals. I also need to do something about this bad looking rain and fog at some point. And, as usual, I will take your suggestions and input into consideration.
Anyway, I do not expect any major roadblock. With 0.6, I was pretty much adding a game within the game. Also, a lot of issues, inherited from previous versions, had to be fixed. Here, the feature set is mostly expanding on existing content. As such, I expect 0.7.x to be done in a much shorter time-frame.
That's all for now. 0.6.12 should be available in a couple weeks. After that we'll start discussing those individual features in more details.
Thanks to all those who've been supporting the game so far!
0.6.10 - Hotpatch 2 (updated)
Thanks to everyone who sent bug reports recently, it's an invaluable time-saver.
In any case, this (hopefully) last hotpatch for 0.6.10 is getting rid of a bunch of problems, generally introduced by this content update.
Cheers.
Changelog
Balance: forest max growth (after several uninterrupted ingame months) is much less dense
Engine: Hardened some parts of the code against possible bugs/edge cases
UI: Right click on a tile with items will open a tooltip (same way you get one on clutter and walls) listing the tile's content
UI: Zone, Multi selection and Depot screens now properly scale vertically when the UI ain't 1:1
UI: Settler info panel no longer interactive when the selected settler is about to go to an expedition to prevent several issues
Fixed: Weird bug causing people exiting to the world map in a way or another to cause a possible crash [0.6.10]
Fixed: Extremely rare crash tied to disassemble job
Fixed: If something impassible is built in the middle of a zone (pasture, farm) it could prevent settlers from supplying said zone
Fixed: Switching to the world map while you're building a zone or another item would either cause a crash or make the cursor go invisible
Fixed: Some menus wouldn't be properly aligned when the UI scale is not set to 1:1 (mostly visible with the city map)
Fixed: Multi selection would allow to draft someone about to depart on an expedition into the military causing issues with the AI [0.6.10]
Fixed: Selection of stuff that would normally be hidden when the fog of war is disabled is not possible
Fixed: An autosave happening when the "recruit new settlers" event is displaying its menu would cause the game to crash when loading said autosave
0.6.10 - Hotpatch 1
This small hot-patch fixes 2 urgent problems reported in 0.6.10. It's tied to the tutorial: one was causing a crash and another one preventing the settlers' AI from doing anything.
Outside of those minor issues, which are now fixed, 0.6.10 seems to be working pretty well. While you can expect another hot-patch in the following days to tidy things up, I'll start working on the next big update immediately.
Cheers.
Changelog
Fixed: Tutorial AI wouldn't start properly (people stuck doing nothing)
Fixed: Crash during tutorial
Version 0.6.10: Production Centers
Hello there!
Here's the newest update for After The Collapse. While the change-log might not be as long as with our previous major updates, it's introducing a couple new major features which will be expanded upon in future patches. I also improved many aspects of the user interface while fixing all the bugs that have been reported so far. Note that I won't be available from Friday to Monday as I will be in Spain. I'm writing this post in a bit of a hurry to be honest. So, don't panic if there's something going wrong and you're not getting a speedy response to your reports, I'll get to them as soon as I get back.
This is the new major feature in this version, both the map and the way expeditions are handled have been overhauled.
As you can see, the map and expedition screens are a bit more user friendly. More importantly, most map locations are now defended by creatures and bandits. Before you can loot their content, you'll have to send soldiers to secure them. This is done the exact same way you'd do for any other expedition. You won't have any control over the fights (at least not yet), but the menu will tell you your chances of victory before launching the expedition. Just make sure not to send people you otherwise absolutely need. Once the location is secured, you can send your usual scavenging and survivor retrieval teams the same way as before.
Some locations, like the factories, farms, mines and so on, are now considered "production centers". It means that you can send settlers there on a semi-permanent basis (still through the expedition menu). Once settled in, and the location repaired, they will send resources back to your base on a daily basis. They also can be called back home through the map screen.
The idea behind those features is to allow AI factions to do exactly the same, which will trigger late game conflicts and some use for the diplomatic screen. Of course, I will be adding city level events as well (creatures invading a location, and other surprises). This will be the subject of the next and last content patch for the 0.6 branch.
Combat Mode
One of the goal for this update was to "merge" the building and the combat GUI in a single one. I spent a lot of time trying to do just that, but I won't lie, it's not something I can do in a reasonable time frame. There are too many things relying on the current system by now. It would take several dedicated weeks at this point. However, I did the next best thing! One major problem with the current system is that it's pretty much "all or nothing", unless you're willing to manually toggle on/off people military skills depending on what you need to do, which can be very tedious.
As such, it is now possible to quickly put one or multiple settlers in combat mode no matter if their military skill is enabled or not, and more importantly, without interrupting anyone else's job. This makes the exploration of unknown buildings or clearing a single but pesky creature way easier. This can be done in two ways.
Firstly, you can now lasso select a group of settlers even in build mode. Doing so will open the menu shown in the screenshot shown above. Pressing the "draft military" button will toggle combat mode with only the selected people used as soldiers (independently of military skill) while the rest of your settlement will continue to work as usual (they won't flee to a safe zone either).
Secondly, there's a new "recruit" button at the bottom of the individual settler info menu. It does the exact same as above, except that only the selected settler will be put in combat mode.
User Interface
Following many of your suggestions, I've added a bunch of little things to the UI. The most notable one is a configurable list of resources at the top of the screen.
Clicking on any of those icons will show the menu pictured above which allows you to select a new resource. The general idea is to reduce the amount of time spent in the clunky storage menu.
Additionally, I've added a right-click menu for all the consumable items (food, drinks, medical stuff) showing exactly what they do. Similarly, standard resources also got their own right-click menu displaying their weight, value, and a clickable list of everything that can be built using those. As with all the item related menu, you can access those menus from pretty much any screen displaying such items (inventory, trading, factory queues / recipe list).
There are a few other minor improvements, updated tool-tips and such. Refer to the changelog at the bottom for a full list.
Performances and Bug Fixes
I improved performances on larger maps quite massively. Without entering into technical details, the size of a map (and how much content it contains) has much less of an impact on performances than before. Additionally, some of you will be happy to know that I got rid of an annoying micro lag that was happening every couple seconds on maps where the content of unexplored buildings is hidden.
And, as usual, all the properly reported bugs/crashes have been fixed alongside a bunch of small issues I noticed during testing. Thanks to all the people who contributed!
Save-game Compatibility
Save-games from 0.6.8 are technically compatible with a few caveats. The content of every unexplored building will be revealed, meaning that if there's any zombie in there, you'll soon be under attack. No way around it. The world map will not contain the 3 new locations. Existing locations, while having hostiles automatically spawned in, won't be properly claimed by hostile factions, this is just a graphical thing, tho. Large batteries will have to be removed and put back again for their new stats to apply.
As usual, older versions of the game are available in the beta tab.
Personal Notes
While not as massive as our two previous content patches, this is still a very important update. The next version will make good use of this new expedition framework, making the world outside your base much more dynamic. Plus, the ability to receive rare materials like electronic parts and steel on a regular basis makes the construction of robots much more manageable. As I said earlier, the next version will be the last in the 0.6 branch. It should have been this one, but the time spent on trying to merge the build and combat UI forced me to delay those last missing features a bit.
Full Changelog
Winter Sale and Patch
Hi there!
Here's a small patch to tidy up the recent major content update. Thanks to your feedback, it fixes the reported balance and technical issues. I am also running a 20% discount for the duration of the winter sale.
As usual with our small patches, save-games from 0.6.8 are fully compatible with this one.
Changelog
Balance: Electric furnaces produce charcoal and metal in bulk (4 metal / 5 charcoal) to make them more efficient and reduce job spamming.
Balance: Slightly reduced chances to find new survivors during expeditions (from 40%/search to 25%/search)
Balance: Heavily reduced the value of pipe RPG, flamer and rifle as they could be used to exploit the trading economy
Balance: Increased trading value of beer and vodka
Engine: Slight general performance improvement
Settings: Discord and Steam RichPresence integration can be turned on / off in the general settings
UI: The weapon/armor selection menu is more informative (showing where the equipment is coming from)
UI: The weapon/armor selection menu no longer displays equipment that the settler is already using
UI: Tool-tip for weapons is more informative (showing ammo, damage, strength and fire rate)
Fixed: Small rendering issue in the new depot's filter menu
Fixed: Bug preventing the cursor from showing up when hovering the back button on the world map
Fixed: Extremely rare crashes tied to multi-threading (slight perf cost counterbalancing the above improvement)
Fixed: Discord integration could just stop working (again, it's an undocumented issue with discord, not with us)
Fixed: Several inconsistencies in the menu used to equip weapon/armors
Fixed: Steam integration not properly working with 0.6.8
Fixed: Launching the game and immediately closing it would trigger an error message
Future Plans
0.7.0 should be released in early/mid January, properly integrating the strategic and diplomatic layers on the world map and closing the 0.6.x development tree. As such, you can expect an article about what's planned for the 0.7.x branch in the coming weeks.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
Version 0.6.8: Robotics
To finish the year with a high note, here is another very large update for After The Collapse focusing on late game, user interface and resource management. As usual, I'll go over the major changes in this article and add the full change-log at the end for the complete picture.
And with no further introduction, let's talk about our new toys :)
For once, let's start with the elephant in the room and have a look at our fresh new user interface. As you can see in the pictures the row of ugly buttons at the bottom has been replaced by a much nicer looking menu.
I also added a mini-map in the top right corner. And as you can expect with a proper mini-map, you can click or click&drag to move the camera accordingly. It can be toggled on/off in the Filter menu (the eye button). However, it has a small graphical limitation for now. While it shows the terrain and settlers/enemies properly, it doesn't display walls and other "constructed" items for performance reasons. Additionally, some of the menus, like the depot, settlers' jobs and zone building menu, scale vertically with your screen resolution now. For that to work, however, the User Interface scale must be set to its default value (also make sure your screen resolution is properly set if running in fullscreen borderless mode. Yes I know, it's a bit experimental at the present).
In combat mode, your survivors' weaponry is now shown even when they are moving. Also, buttons have been added for the "Select All Units" and "Next Unit" keyboard shortcuts. And, finally, you can now Shift+Click or Shift+Lasso to add units to your current selection.
There's a bunch more small improvements and tweaks regarding the UI, but those were the main ones.
Late Game Content
It's not a secret that our tech tree was kinda short (hey, it's early access) and the end result wasn't offering something really new or interesting. Well, 0.6.8 is trying to address this problem with the addition of the Manufacturing/Robotics branch and the introduction of a whole new set of expensive manufactured resources.
Manufacturing
Situated after Advanced Electronics, this technology unlocks 2 new crafting stations: the Electric Furnace and the Manufacturing Bench. The furnace is an advanced version of the good old forge, which replaces charcoal by electricity as a fuel source. It does everything a forge does, but better. More importantly, the furnace is able to produce Steel at a slow pace (and hefty cost). The manufacturing bench converts steel (in addition to other resources) into gun parts, mechanical parts and processors.
The construction of late game factories, turrets and... robots (tada!) all require those new resources.
Robotics
As the name implies, this tech tree (5 techs in total) unlocks the ability to build and customize your own robots! But be warned, this is a lengthy and extremely costly process both in term of raw power and resource consumption. Anyway, completing the first "Robotics" tech will unlock the Robotic Lab pictured below.
This new menu is where you'll build your new best friends. Robots are made out of 3 main parts:
Hot-patch 0.6.5.4: Maintenance
While I'm working on 0.6.8, here's a new small patch fixing several issues reported by you guys. It's a simple patch, fully compatible with previous savegames.
It's also adding a new feature: The ability to grow seeds instead of plants in your farms.
Simply put, you now have the ability to either grow your plants as normal (and get one seed in return, assuming the plant do not die). Or, you can harvest for seeds, in that case, you'll get multiple seeds per successfully grown plants, but no food ingredients.
With this option, you can grow/control your seed reserves without relying on inherently random expeditions and traders. Even a small 2x2 seed production farm will ensure you'll get a healthy supply of new seeds.
Changelog
Balance: Slightly reduced the break chance of the highest tier weapons and armors
Content: You can now setup a farm as a seed production center (each fully grown plant will give several seeds but no food)
Engine: Zones/Rooms can have tech requirements now (unused in base game for now, can be modded in, though)
UI: Added game log text when cattle dies of old age
Fixed: People with traits damaging max health (sick, hunger,...) would lose a small amount of health each time you save and load a savegame
Fixed: Several uncommon issues with traders (generally about not exiting map when they should)
Fixed: Settlers dying of natural causes will no longer break their weapons or armor (only in combat)
Fixed: Breaking loot crates (caverns/sewers) had a chance to break weapons and armors inside (if any)
Fixed: People dying during expeditions would clutter memory and savegames (not significantly, but a bug's a bug)
Fixed: A potential overflow in extremely long games (100 hours or so) which could lead to a variety of small issues
Fixed: The "expiration date" of temporary/morphing traits might reset after loading a save
Plans for next major update
With 0.6.5 (and hot-patches) released , it's time to have a look at what's planned for the next major update. As usual with those articles, it's subject to change during the development, but it will still give you a fairly accurate idea.
Resource Production Centers
The first and foremost feature we're going to tackle is the ability for factions (you included) to control resource production centers on the world map. Before your ask, no, this update will not allow you to directly control your settlers while doing so. It might come later. Production centers will be put on the map, the same way we already do with expeditions. However, they will generally be guarded and in a state of disrepair.
The process to take over one will roughly work like expeditions with a few exceptions. Firstly, you send a few survivors to clear up the location from hostiles. If they succeed, the location is now yours, if they do not, you'll have to try again with a stronger group. Assuming the location is secured, you'll then have to send a crew down there to repair and maintain it. The number of people you need to send and the repair costs will vary from a location to another. People you've sent to maintain the building will live there until you decide to abandon the place.
Once everything is in place, you'll receive resources daily.
On top of the maintenance crew, you'll be allowed to send guards and buy additional defenses with money in order to bolster the defense rating which will determine how well the place is going to fare against enemy attacks. Again, while on paper it might be possible to let the player deal with those attacks manually, we're not there yet.
Active Factions
Of course, you won't be the only faction to do this. AI controlled factions will also slowly take over production centers. At some point, clashes are bound to happen over the control of specific high value locations. They might try to bribe you or take them by force depending on the situation and the faction itself, all of which will have an impact on your relation with each faction. Bandits might try to wreck the place if you don't pay a tribute.
It also means that your reputation with other factions will have more of an impact as it will unlock the ability to settle peace treaties with them.
New Resources & Tech
Of course, if resource productions centers were only giving out the old resources which are generally plentiful, it wouldn't be that interesting. This is why I'll be adding a few new mid-late game resources (namely steel, robotic parts, and a few others) which will be needed to build new late game content. The general idea, at least when it comes to weaponry and defenses is to have 3 distinct tiers, each for a specific activity / stage of the game.
The pipe-weapon stage, which is great for early game and can generally be built and maintained using readily available and plentiful resources from the map. The tech tree for those has been improved in 0.6.5 and I might add specific low tier turrets in this update.
Pre-war weaponry, basically modern weapons and armors you cannot build yourself but which you can repair / recover through trading and exploration. They are relatively rare (at least the best ones) but they are great at pacifying bandits and monsters. Here again this has already been implemented. However, with the addition of resource production centers, I might expand on that a bit. Also, turrets might start to require bullets for them to function properly.
Finally, we'll be introducing high-tier weaponry, with the the associated tech tree and resources which you can only access fully with the control of specific factories: experimental weapons, and drones/robots.
Robot Building Facility
With the proper (late game) tech and resources you'll be able to build this new "crafting station". It will allow you to build and customize your own robots both for defense and work purpose. The station's menu will ask you to select a body, a head and arms, each coming with different stats, weapons, and job abilities at different costs and tech requirements. Assuming all requirements are met, the construction begins and a few hours/days later a new robot will be ready to serve your colony.
For all intent and purpose, robots will act and count as settlers. They obviously wont need to drink or eat, but they'll occasionally need to recharge on specific "pads" which consume electricity. Their weaponry and jobs will be set in stones, you won't be able to alter those after construction.
Other Improvements
Of course, this article only focuses on the major new features. I'll continue to add content, improve the user interface, add sound effects and fix bugs. I will also be merging the combat UI into the standard UI so infestation clearing becomes less of a hassle in the early game (or even dealing with small attacks).
A Few Words
I don't have an exact ETA for this release, but if everything works out okay, it should be delivered just before December (probably with nightly builds made available earlier for those willing to test the new features as they come). Meanwhile, I'd also like to fix a few problems that have been reported to me in the recent days, as such you'll likely get another small patch for 0.6.5.
More articles will also follow when I can show the robot building facility in action :)
