Interstellar Transport Company
Updated development roadmap cinco de mayo edition
We are scratching some items from our last roadmap and would love feedback if you have it.
-we will be working on redoing our reputation system next, we hope to make it simpler, more common sense and transparent to the players.
-we also will possibly be adding more incentive for players to subsidize industries (maybe giving them some percentage of goods directly to company storage)
-next we will be implementing our politics and factions system. This will introduce interstellar wars, nations and nation-wide reputations, embargoes etc..
-after that we will be putting in a tech tree system along with doubling the amount of ships we have in game.
-interstellar obstacles
-contacts from local governments
-buildable jump gates
-stock market system
-additional starting scenarios for predefined games
-ranked multiplayer game mode
After all these things are in game we will likely do our full launch and leave early access. We're hoping this is before the end of 2018!
v0.3.2 PATCH NOTES
-Models for all 5 new buildings added.
-When a ship arrives in a system it is now placed much closer to it's destination planet.
-Fixed ships not picking up dilithium fuel and going negative fuel at times.
-Fixed major price fluctuations.
-Most cargoes had some amount of rebalancing done to them.
-Duplicate star and planet names can no longer occur.
-New music track added.
-Reduced max galaxy size some to reduce float precision issues.
-Fixed destination scroll list bar.
-Fixed the discrepancy between ship group list and ship graphs.
-Route renaming text box no longer loses focus randomly.
-Deleted routes will no longer show up in the ship filter list after loading a save game.
-Colony ship has been sped up and will now jump to interstellar space like all other ships.
-Last ship built will "stick" when the window is closed.
-Selected ships will now clear from details pane when they are sold.
v0.3.1 patch notes, fixing some issues from 0.3.0
April 5, 2018 v0.3.1 PATCH NOTES:
-Prices or supply levels are now always visible in planet view
-Fixed bugs in tutorials and made them available again
-Lowered the starting stockpile of Raw Materials and Rare resources on Earth
-Changed balance of Raw Materials and Consumer goods production / consumption.
-Weaponry usage and production was reduced and prices rebalanced
-Food, Water, and Medicine price calculations correctly use population + refugees now
-Fixed refitting of ships with new cargoes not clearing ship slots correctly
-Fixed new cargoes not loading when stop pickup rule set to 'pickup next hop demand'
-Fixed issue with upgrading spaceports to max level
-Fixed building list not updating after using a,d hotkeys
-Increased minimum scale size of scalable windows (right drag vertically to scale window)
-Fixed issue with loading an old save of incompatible version not returning to main menu correctly
-ESC hotkey now closes any open windows
-Increased repair and colony ship speeds
-Fixed issue where business passenger would not load
-Fixed issue with passengers not loading ships indirectly going to there final destination
-Fixed issue where auto route name would go to blank when removing 1st stop
-Added passenger price tooltip to destinations listing in planet screen
-Fixed NaN bug caused by population going negative when planet in famine and refugees transported away from planet
-Fixed save games not loading correctly into a multiplayer game
Known Issues
- Balance is still a work in progress
- New buildings have placeholder models and images
Patch 0.3.0 released, our biggest patch yet!
Stellarium and Genetic Material are both late game additions that can only be found in interstellar locations and your starting planet's supply of luxuries will become depleted (along with many other resources) over time meaning that you will need to seek out interstellar sources of it. This all adds depth and interest to the late game and really gives you many more reasons to venture into interstellar space.
AI has been improved significantly, and while not perfect is very competitive for longer periods of time. Multiplayer has been improved a ton, enough so that we've removed the "buggy" warning that menaced our main menu. It is now judder free and much more stable. We've made huge improvements to the data available to you, the graphs and new data in the ships screen being an especially awesome addition. Important planets now get random names, you can now see at a glance when important cargoes are very low on colonies. Colony ships now travel to create new colonies so you have a bit of time to plan and anticipate new colonies coming online.
There are plenty of quality of life improvements also. Windows can now be individually resized by holding your right mouse button down over them and dragging them to size. In the planet view press A and D to cycle through the planets in a system. The route list is now sortable and filterable, the cargo rules are a ton easier to manage via a matrix of rules instead of the old drop-downs. Not to mention all the bug fixes of which there are dozens!
We still need to add in the new building models, update our tutorials, and do a little more fine tuning on late game balance, expect these things to be patched in over the coming week or two.
Please let us know any problems or feedback you have, we would love to hear it!! Thank you all so much for your continued support and for all of your suggestions that have gone in to making this patch so great! Can't wait to see everyone enjoying this, it really is a "game changer". ;)
Promised patch notes are below:
New Content
- Added 7 new cargo types:
- Stellarium
- Weaponry
- Robotics
- Xenobiologics
- Genetic Material
- Luxury Goods
- Medicine
- Added 5 new surface buildings:
- Stellarium Mine
- Weaponry Factory
- Robotics Factory
- Xenobiologics Lab
- Medicine Factory
- Updated ship cargo slots configuration:
- Slot 1 = Food, Rare Resources, Refugees
- Slot 2 = Machinery, Robotics
- Slot 3 = Raw Materials, Dilithium Crystals, Stellarium
- Slot 4 = Water, Dilithium Fuel
- Slot 5 = Consumer Goods, Luxury Goods, Medicine
- Slot 6 = Weaponry, Genetic Material, Xenobiologics
- Slot 7 = Colonists, Tourists, Business Passengers
- Added new events for new cargos and buildings
- Balance improvements to existing cargo types
- Added A,D hotkeys to cycle planets while in planet view
- Game now starts paused
- Randomly generated planets now get their own names
- Colony ship now goes out to colonize planets
- Raw Materials, Dilithium Crystals, Rare Resources, Luxuries, Genetic Material now all become depleted as they are harvested.
-Removed fuel capacity and distance cap of interstellar ships
UI Improvements
- Added low threshold icons to planets in system view, to highlight at a glance which planets are running low on food, water etc
- Improved Routes Screen:
- Added stop cargo rules grid
- Added route list sorting
- Screen now hides while adding stop
- Improved Ships Screen:
- Added graphs to show ship performance over time
- Added profit and cargo info to ship list entries
- Improved Finances Screen:
- Change to tables on summary page
- Added spaceport and ship type filters
- Improved Ship Order Screen:
- Added button to clear all cargo
- Now shows ship on sale dates range
- Launch immediately now ticked by defaut
- Improved Planet Screen:
- Added new cargos
- Added new buildings
- Waiting passengers are now a list of destinations
- Updated map modes with new cargo types
- All screens are now resizable with right mouse drag
- Updated ship hover details for new cargo
- Added icons and hover details to repair and colony ships
Bug Fixes
- Lots of multiplayer bug fixes - multiplayer no longer 'buggy'
- Lots of AI bug fixes and improvements
- Fixed autosave naming bug
- Fixed operating profit line graph being wrong
- Fixed other UI bugs
- Lots of other bug fixes and improvements
Known Issues
- Tutorials still need to be updated
- New buildings have placeholder models and images
v0.3.0 Preview, Lots of changes to cargoes coming soon!
Say hello to our revamped cargo flowchart!
This might look daunting at first glance, but I will walk you through all of the changes. We have seven new cargoes, five new buildings, and a bunch of new cargo / simulation interactions that will really add a lot of interesting decisions to gameplay!
Firstly, two big changes we're making to existing systems, the first is that we are removing two seating types and leaving only a single seating type, passengers just weren't as interesting as we expected so we are simplifying that portion of the game significantly. We will be adding Goods storage (for Consumer Goods, Luxuries, and Medicine) along with Isolation storage (for weaponry, xenobiologics, and genetic material) The addition of these cargo slot types will result in much more interesting decisions than deciding between seating class type for passengers.
In addition to removing two passenger slots we are also making it so that raw materials, rare resources, dilithium crystals, and luxuries diminish as they are harvested. This will change the game in drastic ways and make the game even more dynamic then it is. For example, no longer will there be an ever-lasting source of rare resources on the moon to fuel your machinery production. After a few decades you may need to look elsewhere for rare resources.
The first new cargo type is Stellarium, this is an extremely rare element only found in very specific environments in the galaxy (will not spawn in your starting system / Sol) and is used in highly efficient fusion power generation which begins phasing out conventional power generation methods usually about 25-50 years into the game. Because of this, you will need to transport Stellarium to all high and medium population planets to satisfy their ever-growing demand for power. A Stellarium mine is required to extract this resource.
Luxuries is the next new cargo type, this is a moderately rare resource found in random locations throughout the galaxy that requires no building to harvest. All populations want luxuries so this is a good source of easy income (until the resource is depleted of course). In addition to populations directly wanting luxuries it is used in weaponry production. This will especially be important when (in a future version) wars rage between factions and no luxuries are flowing because the weaponry industry is using them all. In this way we hope to simulate the drag on civilian production during a large interstellar war.
Since we've already touched on Weaponry I should also mention that it requires a Factory produce along with rare resources. However, the really interesting thing about weaponry is that security forces require it to maintain their operations. If weaponry should ever run out on a planet, all security stations essentially "shut down" on that planet. You can imagine how detrimental this could be if it happened on a place like Earth that provides over half of the security of the Sol system. Shipping lanes would very quickly be heavily infested with Pirates. Therefore it will be very important to keep your security stations stocked with weaponry at all times!
Next on our list is Robotics. Robotics will give a boost in production to Food, Water, Raw Materials, and Luxuries. The ability to boost production of these cargoes has been requested many times, so this should be a welcome addition! This cargo is similar to Machinery in many respects, it has a maximum amount and is required for a planet to reach it's maximum possible production capacity. However, it's also quite different since the amount needed on a planet is variable based on the population of the planet and it also is "used up" over time. Robotics requires a Robotics Factory along with machinery and consumer goods to produce. It should open up some very interesting strategies!
Moving way over to the right in our picture above is Genetic Material, Xenobiologics, and Medicine. I will discuss these together since they are very interdependent. High habitability planets (besides Earth) will provide genetic material (alien lifeforms basically) which are not harvestable until the planet reaches 100% development, they will diminish rather quickly also. These need to be delivered to a planet with a Xeno lab built on it. Xenobiologics production is increased every time a unit of genetic material is delivered to the xeno lab, meaning you can create a truly massive xenobiologics facility if you wanted to. This is then used in the production of medicines (which also require a small bit of food to produce) at a Medical factory. The amount of Xenobiologics needed to produce one medicine increases with the amount of xenobiologics created galaxy-wide. Medicine is used on all planets to increase birth rates, but is especially useful on low-habitability planets where medicines will be in very high demand to fight off very high mortality rates.
To prevent Robotics and xenobiologics becoming weaponized, robotics factories are not allowed on the same planet as weaponry, nor are Xeno labs allowed on the same planet as weapons factories. Also, the interstellar governing agencies have also ruled that Xeno labs are not allowed on planets with habitability higher than 10% to prevent possible contamination of large populations or native species.
In addition to all these changes, there is BIG news on the multiplayer front... We have solved the stuttering that clients experience and expect this fix to be in patch 0.3.0 as well. There are also a number of other small bug fixes and improvements to come.
We are beginning to throw thousands of new lines of code at Unity so we can get this huge patch out to everyone as quickly as possible! That being said, don't expect it for at least another 3 weeks which puts us solidly at mid-March for a possible release timeframe. These are huge changes as we want to take our time with them and do it right. Thank you all so much for your patience!
Sorry for the huge amount of text, hopefully it was interesting to read of all the new features though =) Let us know what you think below! Thank you all for your continued support.
v0.2.9 PATCH NOTES
-Fixed a bug preventing players from buying ships with no route created.
-You can now get more reasonably sized loans with more favorable interest rates.
-Slowed down the rate of spaceport upgrades by local authorities.
-Raised the amount of rare resources in random starting systems to Sol-like levels.
-Big ships screen performance increases, regular data refreshes should be much faster!
-Sorting by ship profits is now usable in ships screen with much less stuttering.
-Upgraded Unity version to 2017.3
-Two AIs are no longer created when AI is in the last slot in custom / MP game
-Ship orbiting count on planet screen now updates in MP
-Planets no longer spin for clients in multiplayer when they are in planet view.
-Changed the default UI scale to .85 since more people want a smaller UI than larger
-High demand food and water were a bit OP, lowered profit curve
-Units are now displayed for ship speed in the order ship screen.
-Galaxy dust now shows is correct position at game load.
Patch is live =)
Video Tutorial now available on youtube
https://youtu.be/901H8evO0H8
While there are a ton of good Let's Play videos available for ITC, there were surprisingly no video tutorials available. Hopefully this gives new players a better idea of what they are supposed to be doing and how to do it. Please let us know if you have any problems with the video or have further questions, we would love to hear from you!
-Mike and the MT Worlds team
The performance patch! v0.2.8 PATCH NOTES
This patch mainly focuses on performance! It's been one of the biggest complaints from users. The game just starts performing really poorly in mid game. We combined some really aggressive LODs on the ships with some code tricks and cleanups on the route lines to SIGNIFICANTLY imrpove mid and late game fps. I'm talking like it should be night and day for many of you! Can't wait to hear some reports back on how it performs for you all. Please let us know! This DOES NOT fix the lag in the ships screen, that is a completely separate issue, but something that we hope to fix soon also.
This patch also includes a good number of bug fixes and small quality of life improvements. I really hope this, all put together, increases the play-ability of the game a lot! Thank you for your continued support and patience. And as promised... the patch notes! ːsteamhappyː
-Combined AI route lines resulting in huge performance gains mid and late game.
-Made more aggressive LODs for ships increasing performance by about 15% across the board.
-Increased performance by an additional ~3% and made the ship scaling effect work better and more efficiently.
-Increased performance by ~2% in system view by optimizing sunlight calculations.
-Fixed a ship size exploit when upgrading ships.
-Ships can no longer be sold while waiting for repairs in space.
-Rockets can no longer be built on planets not on their selected route.
-Ships can no longer be build on planets in systems they can't reach.
-The tool-tip for planet population now shows weekly net gains or losses for child births and deaths.
-If a planetoid goes into famine or dehydration, all passengers should cancel their travel plans there.
-Famine and dehydration notifications are now separate.
-The company name is color-coded when hovering over a ship now.
The patch should be live in 1-2 hours time
Merry Christmas! Expect our next patch in January.
We will be taking off a couple of weeks to recharge over the holidays and spend time with family. We will return with this patch most likely in the 2nd week of January.. Possibly the first week..
We will continue to monitor our social media, forums, support emails, etc.. etc.. as normal.
Thank you for your continued support, Merry Christmas, and Happy New year!!
-Mike and the MT Worlds team
Scalable UI and two new rockets! v0.2.7 PATCH NOTES:
Anyhow! In addition to this we've also added two new rocket types. The Andromeda and Messier rockets. The Andromeda rocket becomes available in 2058 and can carry 15 units, the Messier is available in 2066 and can carry a full 40 units of cargo. At some point we will add one or two interstellar rockets, but these are good fast mid-game intra-system haulers! I expect to see them used a lot to quickly stave off famines and help kickstart new colonies quicker since they can land without a gate. These rockets use the old graphics from the Sparrow and Neptune rockets and these original rockets have gotten a facelift!
We've also replaced the models for the medium and large maintenance hangars, so they no longer reuse the small maintenance hangar graphics.
In addition to all this new stuff, some re-balancing has been done to alleviate some earlier-than-expected starvation on Earth. You should now have another few decades to help get more food to Earth or move more people off of Earth before the effects of overpopulation really kick in.
We will now begin work on overhauling the routes screen which hopefully won't be as large a project as the ships screen was! In case you were wondering, some graphs will be going in that big open space on the ships screen. Hopefully in the next few weeks we can get this feature in for you.
We hope everyone is enjoying the game and please continue to let us know your suggestions and any issues you experience while playing. And as promised, below are the new patch notes!
-UI is now scalable via the "Other settings" panel in options.
-Two new mid-game rockets added.
-Graphics for the Sparrow rocket and Neptune rocket replaced.
-Graphics for the medium and large Maintenance Hangars replaced.
-Increased prices of the Gorman Darter and Starchaser.
-Population at which a planet produces less food than it consumes increased
-Reduced starting population of Earth slightly.