In this week's dev blog we will talk about terraforming and what is planned to improve it.
What is terraforming?
Let’s start with an overview: The term “terraforming” is about two core features: removing existing terrain blocks (voxels) and placing new terrain blocks, which allows you to shape the world to your desire. Today I’m going to focus on removing (mining) blocks, as that is the part where we get most requests for improvements.
What’s wrong?
I have identified the following core problems:
It is slow: Mining blocks by hand (drill/laser) takes too long. There is research to improve the speed, and the laser is an overall speed increase over the drill, but ultimately it stays pretty slow. It is fine for a couple blocks, but for large scale excavations it gets tedious quickly. This is especially true if you want to excavate large pits for foundations, which in turn leads to players building floating platforms for convenience.
It is cumbersome: The amount of reports about the drill range being too short and similar complaints isn’t particularly low and I get that. You’re in a cave and you want to drill out just two blocks above the character and you can’t reach the block without building yourself some support first. It gets better with the laser, but that one is unlocked only late in the game.
It isn’t fun: In case the two issues above didn’t make you stop excavating at all, you’re left with a boring un-fun task. For many players it feels like the game tries to discourage you from doing large scale terrain modification.
Looking at the list I want to mention that when I designed those systems, it obviously wasn’t my intent to make you have a bad time with terraforming. I think I made a mistake in wanting to have a strong progression. I wanted it to be slower and more limited at first, so that it feels more rewarding when you unlock those researches that improve it. Ultimately I created a system that never really works well. While I still believe that unlocking improvements is an important part of the game, I have changed my perspective on the matter. In hindsight, I’ve misjudged the importance of terrain modification for regular factory building. While terraforming is central and important for mining, it isn’t for regular factory building and therefore people are not going to use it if it is not super accessible.
Solutions & Changes
The new plan for terraforming is to make it as accessible as possible. I just don’t think there is any value in making it cumbersome at the start of the game. I’m looking for a change that makes cosmetic terraforming something that doesn’t bore you and makes you feel like it can be done relatively quickly. That being said, I still want unlockable improvements coming from the research tree. Over the past week I’ve prototyped a system that looks very promising, so let us proceed to the exciting part.
Character Mining Drones
We already have a drone miner building with mining drones to mine ores, so why not give the player robot personal mining drones to do the job for him. In my prototype you can designate blocks (and whole areas) for excavation, and as long as you’re close enough to that area, your personal drones will excavate for you. Here’s a video:
Keep in mind that this is proof of concept and lacks polish in many ways.
As you can see there are multiple ways (single block, “floor”-shaped, 3d box) to mark blocks for excavation and then your drones just fly to the block, mine it for you, and bring you the resource. It is way faster than before, so it should make it more viable to modify terrain early in game. The system still provides plenty of room for research improvements: Drone Count, Drone Speed, maybe even carry capacity and other things.
Initial testing is positive and excavating feels good, therefore it is time to share this and see how the community reacts. As of now I think we would remove the drill, keep the laser as the default mining tool and integrate those new features into the laser. The new mining drones would be available from the start so that you can enjoy terraforming right away.
You might wonder if that makes explosives obsolete and I don’t think it will. If you want to get rid of terrain quickly, without needing precision, explosives will still be a bit faster.
It’s also worth noting that this might not be the only new terraforming mechanic, we might still look at stationary buildings which can excavate for you, but we haven’t decided that yet.
Feedback
I feel like I’m saying this in every blog post, but please let me know what you think. Do those changes look good? Do you think my analysis about the problems is correct, did I miss anything? Do you have any other suggestions? Anything else? Let me know in the Steam comments below or on our Discord.
[p]Hello everyone![/p][p][/p][p]Today’s blog post is a mixture of a couple different things. We’re back to our regular development work and it might take a bit until those in-depth feature heavy dev blogs like we had leading up to Update 2 are going to come back. Yet we’ll try to keep them as interesting as possible until we come back with the big topics.[/p][p][/p]
Train Preview
[p]Here’s a video of the latest art iteration of our train models. We have made some adjustments since our initial teaser video. They are still work in progress and lacking textures, but we wanted to share this early to gather some feedback.[/p][p][/p][p] Let us know if you like the visuals! In the future we’ll also share some details about how trains work, but it needs a little more work on our side first.[/p][p][/p]
Hotfix #3 for Update 2
[p]Our third and by far largest hotfix since Update 2 “Galactic Commerce” is out now and it features a long list of fixes and improvements: See the full patch notes here. [/p]
Update 2.1
[p]We are now aiming at delivering a minor update - Update 2.1 - next, which will address some of the most common quality of life requests, provide you with some additional terraforming features and might have some other smaller content features. No promises on the latter though, yet! Also rest assured that this isn’t slowing down development on the bigger features like trains![/p][p][/p][p]We read over all your feedback, and here are the most requested asks which we’re trying to address:[/p][p][/p][p]Research / Station Upgrade Queue[/p][p]We haven’t had the time to add it in the past, but now we do and I’m happy to confirm that we will add queues for research and station upgrades.[/p][p][/p][p]UI Search Fields[/p][p]We will be adding the ability to search to various UI elements, including the Crafting Frame, Inventory Frame and Research Frame.[/p][p][/p][p]Better Space Ship Management[/p][p]We’ll add additional sorting options, filters and a search bar to the space ship management frame to make it easier to manage your space ships.[/p][p][/p][p]Autorun[/p][p]Tired of holding W? Autorun hotkey confirmed![/p][p][/p][p]Maybe: Improved Map[/p][p]We are looking at improving our map and increasing zoom range, but I can’t yet tell if this will make it into Update 2.1 because it is quite a bit of work. In case we can’t make it, you can expect map improvements in the upcoming larger train update.[/p][p] Maybe: Further Improve Belt Dragging[/p][p]We got a lot of feedback that it would be better if the new belt drag feature wouldn’t have two different modes (forward and backward) and I’ll be looking at options to unify it. I’m not sure if this will work well, but I’ll give it a try![/p][p][/p][p]Additionally there are some other quality of life improvements we’ll be looking into, but as they are more experimental in nature I don’t want to overpromise at this point.[/p][p][/p][p]Thanks for your attention and see you again in two weeks![/p][p]-mrmcd[/p][p] Follow us on socials: [/p]
[p]Pressing escape now pauses the game in single player[/p]
[p]Added arrows to conveyor textures to make it easier to see in which direction they are heading[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug where the firmarlite costs for fuel consumption(past day) in the fuel depot were displayed incorrectly[/p]
[p]Fixed employee of the month sign not showing the name of the employee of the month[/p]
[p]Fix for dropped items not streaming in/out correctly[/p]
[p]Improved ore vein miner tooltip[/p]
[p]Improved stairs 2x1 lod[/p]
[p]Fixed invalid drag plane angle for 2x1 stairs[/p]
[p]Fixed bug with market share display in select planet frame[/p]
[p]Tuned crafting time of Machinery Advanced Parts[/p]
[p]Fixed bug where unequipping the orbital laser wouldn't turn it off[/p]
[p]Fixed bug where smelters were able to make certain crafting recipes before they were unlocked[/p]
[p]Increased loader speed to 1800 items per minute so that they now support the t4 belt speed[/p]
[p]Fixed typo in elevator voice line[/p]
[p]Color tuning to make text on commerce per planet more legible[/p]
[p]Made font size more legible on producer screen panels where there are more than 4 ingredients[/p]
[p]Fixed out of date assembly line info db page[/p]
[p]Fixed memory leak in UIModelPreview[/p]
[p]Fixed error that could occur on dedicated servers that are running without a gpu[/p]
[p]Fixed issue with ore veins sometimes being generated in such a way that two ore vein miners would attempt to mine the same voxels in the core which isn't allowed[/p]
[p]Added a cap to the max speed a modded conveyor belt can run because anything faster than this can cause some game/graphical corruption which can make the game unplayable[/p]
[p]Fixed crash that could occur when deconstructing assembly line mergers[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug where an invalid mesh was created when connecting power lines when the connection points were too close[/p]
[p]Changed market frame so you can see current firmarlite and construction material[/p]
[p]Made it so that on shipping pads newly unlocked ship types are enabled on older shipping pads by default[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug on the shipping pad frame where ship selection button looked as if the ship type wasn't available even though it actually was.[/p]
[p]You can now specify your starting planet through your app.cfg file(ex: starting_planet="_base_starting_planet_3)[/p]
[p]Fixed errors that could occur when interacting with space ships in multiplayer[/p]
[p]Minor changes to recurring buy orders to make them more understandable[/p]
[p]Added error ui for when people connect loaders to direct belt connections(such as the shipping pad)[/p]
[p]Added fuel consumption history and stats to fuel depot frame[/p]
[p]Now show an error message when belts get connected to an unconfigured shipping pad[/p]
[p]Fixed invalid cargo bay upgrade description[/p]
[p]Removed ability to drop/destroy critters(they can still be placed in the world, just not as static items)[/p]
[p]Fixed issues with market frame where ships didn't refresh their name(also improved text readability)[/p]
[p]Added more information in shipping pad tooltip[/p]
[p]Added better information about allowed save file characters[/p]
[p]Added more information about world gen settings[/p]
[p]Fixed issue with conveyor drag mode where it was possible for it to add slopes in the wrong direction[/p]
[p]Freight elevator now flashes red if there are any connection issues and pointing at it will provide a tooltip of what the issues are[/p]
[p]Moved debts to finances tab[/p]
[p]Add firmarlite widget to the top right of the first person hud[/p]
[p]Fix leaderboard not showing own company name on first startup[/p]
[p]Fix typo in container research template[/p]
[p]Fix gaps/seams in mesh of all 3 shipping platforms[/p]
[p]Some players are using WeMod mods and some of those mods are out of date and cause the game to act unexpectedly(such as the infinite jetpack mod). The game will now detect the use of wemods and if the game encounters any errors, the game will pop up a dialog next time it's opened warning the player that their WeMods might be causing issues with the stability of the game.[/p]
[p]Fixed memory leak in modkit icon generation window[/p]
[p]Fixed missing assets in modkit asset packs(you will need the modkit hotfix for these assets to work)[/p]
[p]Freight elevator now tells you max reachable height as your are placing it[/p]
[p]Optimized map framerate(still a work in progress)[/p]
[p]Fixed a bug on trade route ship fuel consumption where fuel didn't increase with distance as intended[/p]
[p]Fixed fog looking incorrect on glass at a distance[/p]
[p]Remove 'resume' button from launcher when you connect to a server because players were assuming it would reconnect to the server when clicking resume and they would end up playing offline and losing their progress[/p]
[p]Fix for a crash that could occur if your save file had more then 65536 conveyors[/p]
[p]Fixed bug that could occur allowing you to have two c3bbs when using the 'skip intro' option[/p]
[p]Hid sector distance when unlocked on planet frame[/p]
[p]Fixed bug in planet frame where the wrong fuel category was shown[/p]
[p]Changed stack size of c3bb hub to 1[/p]
[p]Fixed data system dropdown not showing the correct comparison operator[/p]
[p]Fix for assembly line rail(straight) having too large a collider[/p]
[p]Fixed crash that could occur when placing freight elevators out of bounds using free placement mode[/p]
[p]Ore vein miners now consume less fracking fluid based on mining efficiency research[/p]
[p]Adjusted screen panel of fracking tower and ore vein miner to show additional information regarding mining efficiency[/p]
[p]Adjusted research description for mining efficiency[/p]
[p]Updated localization [/p]
[p]Thank you and have a nice day! Follow us on socials: [/p]
Thank you for all the feedback we have received since the last FOUNDRY Friday where we presented our plans for the future and asked for feedback about what the next update should contain. Reading your thoughts is very helpful and helps us prioritize things.
Our current plan is to do one more big update this year and potentially one or two smaller updates. The main content for the bigger update is planned to be trains, strong contenders for minor updates are new terraforming features and general quality of life improvements.
Please note that things can be subject to change. We wanted to announce our plans early, as we want to be as transparent as possible about the development process, but that includes predictions and estimates which could change.
The plan for trains
We intend to bring trains as soon as possible (before the update itself) on to an experimental preview branch where people can try them out and provide feedback. On this branch you should not expect them to make sense in terms of balancing or to be fully functional, but instead as an early preview to gather feedback - especially regarding usability and player comfort. Trains in a 3D world can be a challenge, and we want to get it right before we release them as a full update. I do not yet have a timeline for such a branch, but I’ll keep you up to date.
Upcoming Hotfix & Quality of Life
We have been working on a hotfix that improves and fixes many of the reported less critical issues in Update 2. It is now available on the hotfix branch and will stay there for a bit longer before we roll it out to everyone as we still have a few more things to work on.
This hotfix also includes a few quality of life improvements:
Pressing escape now pauses the game in single player mode.
Reworked the freight elevator so that it is able to provide feedback about its state and potential issues. A freight elevator that isn’t set up properly will glow red and looking at it will give you additional information about the problem in form of a tooltip.
We plan to address a couple more things that have been pointed out in your feedback, stay tuned!
This is it for today, see you in two weeks! -mrmcd
I want to start with a big thank you to all new and recurring players who are currently playing Update 2 “Galactic Commerce”! We’re pleased to see that the new content sparked a lot of interest and it’s exciting to see new people getting on board daily.
Our launch went well with only a few critical issues that we’ve been able to fix quickly. We are still working to solve some less critical bugs and to add polishing based on your feedback, but as of now it looks like we can go back to working on the next content update pretty soon. And that brings us to the big question of today’s blog post!
What’s next for FOUNDRY?
We have a few big features planned, with some of them already in the works. On top of that we are now carefully evaluating your feedback to see if some new things come up that need to be addressed and prioritized.
Below I’ll go over those features. Neither the order of arrival, nor the size of the next update has been fully decided yet. After such a big update, the team and I would prefer more regular and smaller updates going forward. However we need to make sure the updates make sense and provide enough content to make it worth coming back and playing. Also worth noting: The upcoming updates will add to the game and therefore they will not break saves.
Trains
Our most requested feature, on which we have already been working on. In December we showed an early work in progress teaser, which you can find here. I don’t think there is a lot to be explained about trains, everyone agrees that they are awesome. Place down some tracks, a couple stations and watch your trains move goods around the factory and your mining outposts. They will come in handy for scenarios where you need very high throughput, but even without megafactories they will be useful.
Current State: Overall progress on this feature is pretty good and we hope that it’ll be in the next major update. You can expect more train previews and information in the near future.
Advanced Power Plant
A complex power plant, made out of multiple modular buildings to satisfy your ever growing need for power. This feature will also contain related recipes and content like the plant fuel production. It would expand the science tier 5 content and we have previously shown parts of it in a live stream and a blog.
Current State: We have completed some of the work needed, but there is also quite a bit of work left.
Drilling and Terraforming
We see a lot of feedback requesting better (and faster) ways to drill and terraform. We do have a couple of ideas to solve this. They range from a larger mining drill area, to shaped charges for precision excavation with explosives, to machines that automatically excavate for you.
Current State: We haven’t done any work on this yet, but given it being smaller in scope it might be a strong contender for minor update.
User Experience & Ease of Play
This one is pretty hard to narrow down, but said in simple terms: We want to make playing FOUNDRY more comfortable and approachable. We’re aware that some things need polish and that certain aspects just don’t play as well as they could. While we do have some ideas to adjust things, I don’t have specific examples for now as it’s a bit too early to share those.
Current State: Priority, but no clear plans yet.
Commerce/Starmap Refinement and Depth
We are monitoring your feedback about the new commerce mechanics and will take action to further refine and improve the systems. Additionally there is a lot of room to add additional depth and features on the Star Map.
Current State: Waiting for more player feedback to come in.
Let us know what you think!
We really do care a lot about player feedback and have adjusted our plans previously based on what our community wants, therefore I encourage everyone to share your thoughts and let us know what things you want to see the most. We’re looking forward to reading your messages either in our Discord or the Steam comments below.
Thanks for tuning in, we will keep you updated on the progress over the upcoming blog posts and share new information whenever we can. One last thing before we wrap up — if you're enjoying the game, we'd really appreciate it if you left us a review on Steam!
We have released a hotfix since the release of Update 2: Galactic Commerce that was released yesterday, May 6th.
Read the full list of fixes below:
Updated Russian voice lines
Fixed an error that could cause foundry to get stuck on a black screen on launch(if you still have this happen to you, please check your antivirus settings and please let us know which antivirus you use so we can add Foundry to their list of exemptions)
Fixed an error that could occur when clicking buttons during galaxy generation
Fixed a hang that could occur if you built a loop out of your conveyors
Fixed issue where certain planets could be generated with no demands
Fix for character color change not working
Fixed an issue where the company rank requirements wasn't being properly set when using the spanish(latin american) localization
Fixed an error that would prevent you from deleting a legacy_update_1 save file if you first tried to load it
Fixed an error that could occur if you clicked to delete a file and then clicked to load a file without closing the delete popup
Fixed error that could occur when disabling desync debug data
Fixed desync that could occur when bulk demolishing objects
Removed company rank requirement for Science Pack 2
Fixed desync that could occur when unlocking ships
Fixed save files that have planets with no competitors assigned to them
Update 2: Galactic Commerce is now live! This update brings robot production and trading to the forefront of FOUNDRY and challenges you to build bigger and better than ever before, all while mastering the complexities of interstellar trade.
Watch the trailer here:
Patch notes:
Features:
Added Galactic Commerce:
New Galaxy map:
Procedurally generated galaxy on each fresh game start.
Unlock galactic sectors and acquire trade licences to sell your robots to planets.
Set up and manage supply routes between planets to distribute your robots.
Buy and sell resources on the galactic market.
Compete for market dominance against other companies.
New Space Station Features:
Dozens of new station upgrades.
Spaceship Management: Buy spaceships of different types and assign them to various tasks.
Establish trade routes to the galactic market.
Sales Platform: Sell your products to casual customers.
R&D Lab: Earn XP and levels on each produced robot and improve your products.
Fuel Station: Produce your own spaceship fuel to supply your spaceships instead of buying it from the market.
Many new robot types for you to build and sell.
Choose your company name and logo.
New Company Rank system: Increase your rank based on your lifetime earnings.
New Shipping pad buildings to ship items between the space station and the planet.
New station terminal building to contact the space station.
Keep track of your finances on various accounting-related charts and tables.
New feature that allows you to pay back your debts.
New onboarding tasks.
New quests from C3-BB.
New research options to fit the commerce narrative.
Countless balancing adjustments.
Pipe system 2.0: New and improved pipe flow simulation, including performance improvements.
Added new smart conveyor drag mode.
Added new starting planet option which affects which biome and resource distribution.
Added orbital uplink tool and space laser that can be used to terraform large areas.
Added lava caves and lava smelters.
Added new Tundra biome.
Added new jungle/sandy desert/forest critters.
Added new underwater decor/vegetation.
Add new freight elevator III/IV.
UI Visuals Rework:
New Frames + Header Bar Visuals
New Button Visuals
New Dropdown Visuals
New Scroll View Visuals
New Slider Visuals
Bug Fixes:
Fixed data system settings copy not working for auto producers.
Fixed lods on several buildings.
Fixed issue with smoke sometimes going through floors.
Fixed an issue with loaders going to sleep when slots are soft locked.
Construction drones now appear as idle when you’re out of materials.
Fixed elevator lods.
Fixed error that could occur when using bulk demolish when connected to a dedicated server.
Fixed blast furnace sometimes not working correctly.
Fixed an issue where the character could fall through the terrain and then spawn in the sky.
Optimizations:
Optimized physics simulation.
Optimized particle systems by moving their simulation to the gpu.
Optimized loader animation effects.
Optimized cpu rendering cost of screen panels.
Optimized ship avoidance logic.
Optimized text rendering.
Optimized scene partition queries.
Optimized critter rendering/simulation.
Optimized chunk memory usage.
Optimized chunk render mesh creation.
Simulation will no longer run any more then twice per frame and will show a warning if the game is running below 30fps which would require more then two simulation ticks per frame.
Optimized autosave time and memory usage on large save files.
Optimized cpu rendering cost of several buildings including blast furnaces, screen panels, assemblers, greenhouses, electric arc furnaces, smelters, freight elevators, research stations, radio towers, logistic containers, greenhouses, transformers, conveyor balancers, construction warehouses, dissolvers, tanks, pipes, air intakes, hot air stoves, lights, burner generators, boilers, levers, elevators, turbines, assembly line producers/painters, fog volumes and all building buttons.
Improved streaming speed/reduced streaming cost of several buildings in the game.
Optimized several hitches that could occur when streaming objects.
Optimized texture memory usage of buildings/terrain/ui.
Improved texture streaming support.
Optimized critter animation memory usage.
Added additional texture streaming support to many buildings in the game.
Game simulation now slows down by default when a player is joining so that they don’t get stuck for minutes trying to catch up the simulation if loading the game takes a long time.
Misc:
Added a second desync check which forces the player to reconnect if the number of buildings doesn’t match between the client and server.
Added safe mode dialog on startup if any errors occurred in game while using mods.
Fixed issue that could prevent you from joining a multiplayer game that had been running for a while.
Added drag/rotation/zoom on all screens featuring 3d models(such as the space station screen).
Added mod versioning.
Fixed memory leak in mod kit.
Mod uploader now downloads the current version of mods when refreshing from workshop.
Fixed desync that could occur when triggering dynamite.
Dedicated server now saves on exit.
Upgraded Unity to 2022.3.51f1
There are a lot of new things in this update, so make sure you check it out! You can also watch the latest dev stream here: https://youtube.com/live/prHy-9ZFfoM
This is the final dev blog before we release Update 2 “Galactic Commerce” next Tuesday at 14:00 CEST. In this blog I’ll be covering a couple different things related to the update, before I have one more surprise feature at the end of the episode.
Dev Stream on Monday
On Monday at 18:00 CEST (9AM PT) we’ll be going live on Twitch (Paradox Interactive Channel) and on YouTube (Foundry Channel) to show off various features of the update and to answer your questions. Jump by and let’s have a chat!
Update Preview Video Part 2 from SpectrumDad
This week we have released the second part of our update preview series, made in cooperation with SpectrumDad. This one covers robots, commerce, lava caves and the R&D lab.
In case you missed it, you can check out part one here.
The Legacy Version Steam Branch
With the new update you will have to restart a new save as too many things have changed to keep the saves compatible. However we do not want to strip you of the ability to keep playing or revisiting your old saves since we know how many of you spent hundreds of hours on a single save.
For this we have introduced the Legacy Version Steam Branch: It allows you to go back to the old FOUNDRY version, which then allows you to keep loading and playing old saves. For details on how it works we have prepared a post on our Steam forum, which can be found here.
Barreled Olumite
In the previous blogs I have covered the galactic market, which allows you to buy and sell items. While that lowers the profit margin of your robots, it does offer an interesting new angle to resource acquisition. Having a shortage of resources? Quickly buy some from the market. Want to skip mining entirely? Expensive, but an option.
However the market only supports solid items, and therefore it didn’t cover one of the most requested things: An infinite Olumite source. To finally address this we have added Olumite barrelling, which allows you to put Olumite into barrels, which are solid items. Later you can empty the barrel to convert it back to its liquid state. For this we have introduced a new machine, the Barrel Filler.
We also have added a bit of additional gameplay around it with things like having empty barrels as an item you need to manage. Re-use them or recycle them back into Xenoferrite Plates. (Or burn them to dust in the Incinerator?) Empty barrels will now be needed for a handful of crafting recipes and things like Portable Fuel will now leave you with the empty barrel after using it at a generator.
Pipe System Rework
And here’s the final surprise for the update: A fully reworked pipe system. We (and the community) were unhappy with the way our pipe system worked since quite some time. Simple questions about throughput could barely be answered without writing paragraphs. What was well intentioned by making it the most realistic it could be, ultimately mostly caused inconveniences.
So we decided to fully redo it and here’s how it works now: The way you build pipes and connect them to machines hasn’t changed, it all looks the same. But instead of pipes holding content individually we now combine them into pipe networks. Each network can only hold a single type of liquid, which makes fluid mixing and mistakes less likely to occur. The capacity of a network depends on the amount of pipes and tanks connected.
Each pipe network has a throughput limit of 36.000l per minute (potentially subject to change, depending on feedback), which is individually tracked for inputs and outputs. That means every second you can add 600l and also remove 600l from the network.
Distance between machines doesn’t matter anymore, however there is a new mechanic we called “network complexity”. Each connected pipe (or tank) adds to the complexity number of a pipe network, and once you have exceeded its limit you’ll only get 10% of the original throughput. It’s not immediately broken, but a pretty severe reduction. To solve this, you need to use pumps to break your networks apart into smaller segments. Pumps will pump the network’s content to another network, but they have the lowest priority compared to all other machines, which means in case of constraints the closest networks will be supplied.
From our initial testing the system works very well and most importantly is easy to understand and monitor. You can now analyze your segments with the tablet, see the screenshot below.
The provided information and history about what happened in the past minute should help a lot when planning pipe systems and it should finally make it understandable without unclear and hidden limitations. Another positive side effect is that this system is significantly cheaper to simulate and therefore will increase performance in your factories.
And finally, pipelines: The game still features the previously existing pipelines, which are like pipes, but a lot larger. They work exactly the same, but they offer a ten times higher throughput limit, which can be very useful. For example you can pump multiple throughput-constrained pipes into a pipeline on one end, have the pipeline go for a very long distance and then split it back up into smaller pipes at the destination. The throughput limit of the regular pipes is pretty generous and probably enough for most bases, but if you want to go big pipelines maybe the solution for various design layouts. For example you could have a central pipeline that spans your factory, which has smaller pipes branch off wherever needed.
I’d also like to mention that we still plan to further improve the experience of dragging pipes. That wasn’t in scope for this release, but it is still on our list. However we did improve belt dragging by quite a bit, if you want to find out more, click here.
And this concludes today's FOUNDRY Friday. Thanks for reading and thanks for sticking with us as we’ve been working on this Update. Everyone on our team worked really hard for the past ten months to get this out to you and we are excited to see your responses. We hope you’ll enjoy it!
