Captain of Industry
Patch notes for v0.4.9
v0.4.9
* Pinned product stats display can be now reordered by drag & drop.
* Added in-game calculator to the search field and game console.
* Logistics improvements:
- Construction/deconstruction jobs are now grouped into batches which drastically reduces trips that trucks have to make.
- Changed logistics rules to allow exporting from storages even if they have an import slider active and the inventory is above the slider amount. Similar behavior applies for the export slider.
- Trucks assigned to storages now have a job priority over non-assigned trucks.
- Added an option to disable import routes exclusivity so that storages with active import routes can also accept products from non-assigned sources.
- Logistics job priority for an entity now reflects the number of pending jobs. This means that vehicles will be more nicely distributed between multiple entities. It also prevents cases where balancing large high-priority storages choked the entire island's logistics.
- Assigning of vehicles (for example to storage or mine tower) now prefers non-paused ones.
- Improved refueling priorities (storage export priority is no longer used to find a fuel source).
- Improved vehicle queueing for storages and gas stations that was causing low throughput. Vehicles can still be served one at a time but they no longer waste time by forming a queue.
- Logistics overview window now shows assigned vehicles to tree harvesting and buildings.
* Cargo ship improvements:
- Cargo ships now depart only when empty and when they can get full load (if possible based on max capacity of the world resource).
- It is now possible to force-depart a cargo ship for emergency delivery.
- Cargo ship UI now shows available quantities to pick up in the world.
- Cargo ship depot modules now show their throughput in the UI.
* Updated Unity to version 2021 LTS. This may help fixing some crashes and issues with compatibility.
* Removed tree animations, resulting in up to 30% increase in FPS (based on the amount of trees on the screen).
* Clicking a machine (to open an inspector) will show its I/O icons and ports like in build mode.
* Added popup window for hovered buildings and machines in the research tree.
* Fixed sorters to be able to match throughput of T3 transports.
* Fixed excavator mining job that could get stuck doing nothing in rare cases.
* Fixed recipes priority for recipes that have the same outputs.
* Allowed dumping of fertilizers (with pollution effect).
* Fixed colors of liquids so that they are more close to their icons colors.
* Fix issue in adopt population button.
* Fix text width in harvest statistics.
* Increase refueling distance when refueling multiple excavators with leftover fuel. This especially affects tier 3 vehicles.
* Chickens cannot be added to a paused animal farm.
* Show products stored in connectors.
* Show fuel consumption for vehicles in Vehicle depot.
* Research lab no longer accepts products when not fully built.
* Increase text contrast in error popups.
* Fixed jerky camera when following a vehicle.
* Updated translations, thanks to everyone who is contributing!
v0.4.9a
* Fixed that mining trucks ignored storage assignment constraints in case their tower had a storage assigned.
* Fixed cargo ships inspector that was "paying unity" while open.
v0.4.9b
* Fixed a case where power generators could get stuck in a state where they are consuming mechanical power but not producing electricity (if there were not enough turbines to power them fully).
* Hide port icons and arrows in the balancer UI.
* Fixed transports copy-paste that was not copying settings such as construction pause.
* Fixed cases where deliveries to building constructions could get stuck.
* Fixed farm yield estimates that did not take empty fields into consideration.
* Fixed a rare issue where quick-deliver could take away more products than it should.
v0.4.9c
* Actually fixed farm yield estimates that did not take empty fields into consideration (this time for real).
* Fixed console command for taking screenshots "capture_and_save_screenshot" that failed when given a custom screenshot size.
* Fixed that some unlocks in research did not have a proper popup.
* World resources are now unlimited on Sailor difficulty by default.
CD#28: Logistics optimizations, queuing fixes, and quality of life changes!
Maddprof has mastered the “Art of Terracing”
Update v0.4.9 features showcase
Note: Full patch notes are at the end of this update.
Today we are launching the v0.4.9 patch to the experimental branch. For details on how to join this branch, please check out our previous Captain’s Diary #27.
One of our biggest updates yet, v0.4.9 brings a lot to the table in terms of Quality of Life and Logistical Optimization. We’ve received some amazing feedback from the community and we’ve made some highly requested changes to our logistics systems. Check out the big features below!
Upgrade of Unity rendering engine
As you might know, we use Unity as the rendering engine for COI and until now we were running on version 2019 LTS (long-term support). To get access to all the latest and greatest features and fixes, we have updated Unity to the latest version 2021 LTS. Yes, the “2021” version is the latest, published a few months ago. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We hope that this will also resolve many problems including some rare crashes and compatibility issues that players were reporting.
Drag and drop of pinned product stats
A highly requested feature, you can now drag and drop pinned product stats on the right side of the screen to your liking!
In-game calculator
Do all your maths without taking your eyes off the screen! Use the search bar for computing simple algebraic expressions. This is useful for not having to pull up the calculator on your phone or alt-tabbing to see how many more assemblers you need to build. You can also use the in-game console for this by typing equals sign, e.g. “= 1+1”.
Disable exclusive import toggle
We have introduced a new toggle in storage UI that allows you to disable exclusive imports when import routes are present. This means that you can have a storage accepting deliveries from all trucks even when the storage is a target of an import route. This is extremely helpful for example when you want to assign a mine tower to a storage but keep the storage accessible to all other trucks when needed (like when you unassign a full truck from a mine tower).
Vehicle queuing be GONE!
No more truck blobs and staggering of vehicles when trying to access a single building. While the buildings will still only serve one vehicle at a time, the others won’t be trying (and failing) to form a queue and pausing while navigating. Instead, all vehicles will go toward their destination building and wait by it for their turn. This speeds up jobs throughput across the board.
Batch Building
Trucks can now complete several construction jobs in a single trip! This is extremely useful for small belt segments that previously required lots of journeys involving small quantities. What would take 20 trucks can now take 2!
Inputs/outputs shown when selecting a building
See what could possibly be missing when selecting a building now that input and output nodes are shown.
More detailed tooltips in the research tree
See more details when hovering over buildings and machines icons in the research tree.
Fixed sorters throughput
Sorter throughput will now match the speeds of the belts attached to them. Before, using a sorter could create a choke point in your transport line, but no more! If they are attached to a T3 belt they will have the same throughput as a T3 belt!
Fuel consumption details in the vehicle depot
Now you can see the difference in fuel consumption rates for vehicles at the depot. Finally, you can know why you’re running out of fuel so quickly after building 12 large haulers. You can also use this information to get a rough estimate of how much diesel you’ll need to produce to keep up with demand.
Trees rendering optimizations
We have been having issues with the performance of tree rendering for some time now. This has become only worse after we upgraded to Unity 2021 where tree rendering became even slower by 20%.
After extensive investigation, we have revealed that tree animations were the culprit of the poor performance. By removing the animations, we saw up to 30% higher FPS on maps with lots of trees. Trees slightly moving in the wind look nice, so we decided that the performance penalty was not worth it and opted for the increased rendering performance for now.
Screenshot from profiler that shows the speedup obtained by removing the tree animations. The horizontal axis is time, and the vertical axis is FPS (frames per second), lower is better. The New Haven map went from 60 to 80 FPS!
Community creations
We see a lot of great factories and screenshots every day and here are a few we’d love to showcase:
Yandersen is on a terraforming rampage! They are completely terraforming the whole island!
Vaquinha has created an extremely clean Main Bus, but what else they’ve done is quite impressive:
They’re storing all of their mined minerals above ground for…future mining.
Art contest update
In the previous Captain’s Diary we have started a fan art contest and while we have received some nice entries, we decided to extend the deadline for another two weeks to allow more people to join. Share your fan art (drawing, meme, etc.) with COI theme to #fan-art channel on our Discord server to enter the contest. COI Supporter edition + t-shirt prices are still on the table! Here are entries from players “Alaska” and “Wikus”:
Patch notes for v0.4.9
* Pinned product stats display can be now reordered by drag & drop.
* Added in-game calculator to the search field and game console.
* Logistics improvements:
- Construction/deconstruction jobs are now grouped into batches which drastically reduces trips that trucks have to make.
- Changed logistics rules to allow exporting from storages even if they have an import slider active and the inventory is above the slider amount. Similar behavior applies for the export slider.
- Trucks assigned to storages now have a job priority over non-assigned trucks.
- Added an option to disable import routes exclusivity so that storages with active import routes can also accept products from non-assigned sources.
- Logistics job priority for an entity now reflects the number of pending jobs. This means that vehicles will be more nicely distributed between multiple entities. It also prevents cases where balancing large high-priority storages choked the entire island's logistics.
- Assigning of vehicles (for example to storage or mine tower) now prefers non-paused ones.
- Improved refueling priorities (storage export priority is no longer used to find a fuel source).
- Improved vehicle queueing for storages and gas stations that was causing low throughput. Vehicles can still be served one at a time but they no longer waste time by forming a queue.
- Logistics overview window now shows assigned vehicles to tree harvesting and buildings.
* Cargo ship improvements:
- Cargo ships now depart only when empty and when they can get full load (if possible based on max capacity of the world resource).
- It is now possible to force-depart a cargo ship for emergency delivery.
- Cargo ship UI now shows available quantities to pick up in the world.
- Cargo ship depot modules now show their throughput in the UI.
* Updated Unity to version 2021 LTS. This may help fixing some crashes and issues with compatibility.
* Removed tree animations, resulting in up to 30% increase in FPS (based on the amount of trees on the screen).
* Clicking a machine (to open an inspector) will show its I/O icons and ports like in build mode.
* Added popup window for hovered buildings and machines in the research tree.
* Fixed sorters to be able to match throughput of T3 transports.
* Fixed excavator mining job that could get stuck doing nothing in rare cases.
* Fixed recipes priority for recipes that have the same outputs.
* Allowed dumping of fertilizers (with pollution effect).
* Fixed colors of liquids so that they are more close to their icons colors.
* Fix issue in adopt population button.
* Fix text width in harvest statistics.
* Increase refueling distance when refueling multiple excavators with leftover fuel. This especially affects tier 3 vehicles.
* Chickens cannot be added to a paused animal farm.
* Show products stored in connectors.
* Show fuel consumption for vehicles in Vehicle depot.
* Research lab no longer accepts products when not fully built.
* Increase text contrast in error popups.
* Fixed jerky camera when following a vehicle.
* Updated translations, thanks to everyone who is contributing! Captain’s diary #27: Fan art contest and update v0.4.8
Update v0.4.8 and experimental branch
Note: Full patch notes are at the end of this update.
Today we’ve launched a larger update v0.4.8 which is a little special because it’s the first update that was published to the experimental branch a few days in advance. Many curious players have already tested it and this gives us more confidence that there are no new issues.
We will keep this pattern of publishing larger patches to the experimental branch in the future so if you are interested in having new features and fixes earlier at the cost of a slightly less stable game, feel free to join! Saves are always compatible going from lower to higher versions, but not the other way around. It is always safe to go from main to experimental branch, but if you’d like to leave the experimental branch and keep your save, you can only do so if the game version in the main branch has caught up with experimental and is the same.
You can join the experimental branch by choosing “experimental” under “betas” in the game settings.
Notable new features from v0.4.8
Discarding products from shipyard
We’ve Added a new option to discard products from the shipyard. This was a highly requested feature as some people were finding their shipyards overflowing with items not needed anymore. Also, a shipyard overloaded with cargo cannot offload cargo on your ship.
Now you can remove any item (besides waste products) from your shipyard instantly with a click.
Fixed and improved dumping logic
Side by side comparison of the old and new dumping logic.
We fixed multiple more issues with dumping:
- Faster rejection of unreachable designations.
- Trucks will not give up on searching a valid place for dumping until all possible places are tested.
- Trucks will no longer break building assignment rules when the initial dumping was interrupted.
- Fixed issues where large dump trucks could not reach dumping designations because of their size.
Unreachable designations and current goal visualizations
We know that the dumping of excess material on terrain can be frustrating at times. Especially when a truck is not dumping and there is no indication why. To improve this, more helpful job statuses in the truck inspector window are now shown, and when a stuck truck is selected, there are new visual indicators pointing to designations that are unreachable.
Additionally, all vehicles now show their goal when navigating.
Notice the new truck job description and unreachable designations marked by the orange lines.
Other Quality of Life Changes
Added shift + click to assign and unassign 5 vehicles at once.
This can be used on Tree Harvesters as well!
Added double click to toggle research node.
Quickly build up that queue!
Added right click to clear a research node from the queue.
Aaaaand it's gone, just like that!
New landfill texture
Less repetitive and looks more like a landfill!
Fan art contest
Open up your MS Paint, Gimp, Photoshop, or use real-life art supplies and show us what you got! Win a COI Supporter Edition for you or a friend, as well as our awesome soundtrack! Plus a COI T-Shirt once available (by the end of the year).
Rules:
- Submit a fan art (drawing, meme, etc.) with COI theme to #fan-art channel on our Discord server
- Art must be your original creation
- Submissions are open until Sunday the 24th
- We will announce winners in the next edition of Captain’s diary.
And for some inspiration, take a look at this awesome watercolor painting made by a friend of Captain Marek a few months ago!
Excavator during sunset in watercolor by Kejia Cao
Patch notes for v0.4.8
v0.4.8
* Added option to discard products from shipyard (except waste products).
* If a shipyard collapses when the ship is docked, it will now properly re-dock at another shipyard.
* Fixed and improved dumping logic.
- Faster rejection of unreachable designations.
- Trucks will not give up on searching a valid place for dumping until all possible places are tested.
- Trucks will no longer break building assignment rules when the initial dumping was interrupted.
* Added shift + click to (un)assign 5 vehicles at once.
* Added double click to toggle research node.
* Added right click to clear a research node from the queue.
* Added visualization of unreachable terrain designations for trucks and excavators.
* Added visualization of the current navigation goal for all vehicles.
* Added an option to rename world map mines and oil rigs.
* Improved navigation of rocket transporters that will only try to navigate to launch pads that are empty and no other transporter is headed there. Transporters will no longer queue in front of launch pads.
* Added missing computing demand for rocket assembly building.
* Improved terrain texture for landfill.
* Updated vehicle barrier textures so that they better match when built in long rows.
* Reserved ocean areas are now turned on during terrain designation and construction of buildings with ocean constraints.
* Fixed world map upgrades that were not cancelable.
* Fixed issues where large dump trucks could not reach dumping designations because of its size.
* Fixed a rare case where a truck could keep turning in a circle indefinitely.
* Settlement modules now won't accept products until constructed.
* Nuclear reactors can now be flipped.
* Improved performance of many UI elements, especially machines with long recipe lists.
* Mine tower and Farm inspectors are now scrollable.
* Fixed incorrect idle vehicles count in UI when there were no vehicles.
* Added option to disable notifications for well pumps.
* Fixed issue where starvation was killing pops in other settlements than where it was happening.
* Trucks no longer queue for paused excavators.
* Added input normalization for waste sorting plant.
* Copy tool also copies mine tower config including assigned buildings.
* Updated translations, thanks to everyone who is contributing! Patch notes for v0.4.7d
* Further fixes of vehicle jobs.
Patch notes for v0.4.7c
* Fixed that large trucks were not able to serve nuclear reactors with partial loads turned off.
* Prevent cut & paste of entities that already had parts (quick) delivered.
Patch notes for v0.4.7b
* Disabled flipping of Shipyard.
* Fixed that research lab that did not accept products from large trucks when partial quantities were disabled.
* Increased robustness of vehicles jobs to avoid further issues and crashes.
* Reduced log file retention from 60 to 10 days to save space.
Patch notes for v0.4.7
* Vehicles can now be ordered to go to a location (see new button in inspector).
* Fixed unexpected flooding of mines that could occur from "invisible" ocean tiles. Ocean plane was moved from height 0 to +0.5 so that it is visible on flooded terrain at height 0.
* Improved flooding rules so that small patches of ocean (less than 10 connected tiles) no longer cause flooding.
* Game is now auto-saved during pause if some game actions were made. This prevents losing progress when planning setups during pause. Auto-saves taken during pause are kept separate from others to not override all other auto-saves while planning.
* Added a special "Assigned To" panel for vehicles.
* "Quit" and "Exit to main menu" no longer asks the player to confirm exiting when the game was already saved.
* Error dialog is shown for failed auto-saves.
* Very short transports now have the same throughput as longer ones (previously the throughput was slightly higher). This should solve issues with overflowing priority ports on balancers connected by short transports.
* Farm no longer accepts water and fertilizer during construction and pause.
* Fixed farm terrain surface to be collapsible.
* Increased unity per rocket launched to 1 per month (12 unity in total).
* Fixed upgrade cost of entities that were built before v0.4.1a that was higher than construction from scratch.
* Added missing entity collapse icon in inspectors and notifications.
* Updated translations, thanks to everyone who is contributing!
Captain’s diary #26: Welcome Zuff, our new community manager!
MaFi Games is growing!
I am excited to introduce you to Captain Zuff – our new community manager! Give him a warm welcome if you see him around :) Here are a few words from him:
Hey Captains! I'm Zuff and I'm excited to be a part of the team and help this game and community grow into the biggest factory we've ever seen! I'm a huge fan of simulation, tycoon, and city-building games, going back to the first SimCity in 1990. Captain of Industry, in my opinion, is the best one yet and that's what makes this position a dream come true. Looking forward to the future! Build on and don't run out of oil!
My role is to be the in-between for the devs and the community. My duties will include moderation, video production, community interaction, issue/suggestion management, and social media handling.
My goal will be to bring the community's creations, ideas, and suggestions together and try to identify what's important, what's already been submitted, and what can be trimmed. This way the developers can have a better understanding of top priority requests for features and bug fixes.
I also want to showcase users' factories, mods, and other creations on our official outlets. Finally, I'll work with content creators and other media sources for more exposure to this fantastic game.
Zuff’s humble factory. He is a little guilty of restarting saves often so he is yet to launch his first rocket!
Development update
The last two weeks brought dozens of fixes and also some most-wanted features. Just to name a few:
- It is now possible to move the main Shipyard.
- Added a new edict that allows evicting the population from the island.
- Copy/paste and cut/paste tools now support transports.
- Logistics assignments are now directional.
- The area delete tool can now cut transports based on the selected area.
- Reduced size of save files by up to 20%.
We would like to keep the pace of fixing the most important issues while adding new features to stabilize the game further but expect the frequency of patches to go down and their size to go up!
Among other things, we are working on solving the mine flooding issues caused by invisible ocean tiles below the surface. While technically, this is not a bug, we understand that this is causing a lot of frustration and has to be fixed soon. We also decided to add a manual vehicle control so you will be able to tell the vehicle to navigate to a certain place.
We are also looking into tree replanting mechanics. While you can get unlimited wood by importing it from the world, not being able to replant trees doesn’t feel right. We are hoping that replanting will be used as a wood source as well as decoration to add some greenery to the factories.
There are a few more items on our radar, namely pathing issues and end-game performance. These are larger tasks that will take us some time to tackle but rest assured that we are working on them.
Extensive copper and steel smelting shared by player ItDoesntHurt_IHope.
Update from the Community
Our community is growing in many places! Recently we have celebrated 7500 members on our Discord server, 1300 members on our subreddit r/captain_of_industry/, and our are very active as well; welcome, everyone! If you need help or just want to share your work, please do!
We are also thinking about creating a dedicated COI forum on our website since we feel that all the current options are not meeting our needs, especially discoverability and searchability. We’d like to allow anyone without any account to read and search posts. We’d love to hear your thoughts about this. Let us know on our Discord or Steam forum!
Conveyor belt artwork posted by player Coin. This is some MOMA material!
Patch notes for v0.4.6
* Added a new edict that allows evicting population from the island.
* Removed limitation that only one product is attempted to be sent via one port.
* Balancer and steam turbine config is now properly copied.
* Custom entity names are now properly copied.
* Search on storages is no longer case sensitive.
* Excavator now immediately stops mining when tower area is re-assigned elsewhere (instead of working on it till it is fulfilled).
* Animal farms no longer accept products when not constructed or paused.
* Very (very) long transports will no longer break the game. Instead, they show warnings that they are too long and they need to be split.
* Buried transports no longer unbury themselves after upgrade.
* Fixed corrupted save exception that could happen if there were too many terrain layers on one tile.
* Fixed issue where material layers on tiles were accumulating too much. Now, thin layers underground are merged. This also reduces save files by up to 20%.
* Fixed that vehicle recovery was not restoring assignments.
* Changed quarantine icon to be a face mask.
Patch notes for v0.4.5b
* Fixed clone tool for single entity that was not properly copying its rotation.
* Clone tool for single entity now only copies settings when shift is held.
* Updated translations, thanks to everyone who is contributing!