Update 23 Test Build

[Nitrous Butterfly]

Update 23 :: New Beginnings Now Live on main branch!

https://steamcommunity.com/games/704510/announcements/detail/1697229968999730497



Update 23 is now available on the Test Build branch. This is the first "stable" version of update 23 and I'm looking for your help to track down bugs and offer your feedback on the new content. There is still some additional content in development, so expect further updates to the Test Build branch.

Main Features

• New Look To Colonists
  
• New Starting Condition and World Generation
  
• New Early Game progression
  
• New Power Generation System
  
• New Research Projects
  
• Balance changes

Please review the release notes below for all of the changes

Feedback

Other than reporting bugs and glitches, I'm looking for feedback related to the new changes to early game progression. Please report anything as a response to this thread and/or take the below feedback survey.

Update 23 Test Build Feedback Survey
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MV67PND

About Test Builds

The optional Test Build branch is for testing the latest features before they go live to everyone. As it is a testing version there can be more bugs/issues than in the normal version. If using the Test Build branch, please report any issues you encounter or any feedback on new game play mechanics. Your feedback and/or reports will help to ensure the final version is the best it can be.

For information about accessing the Test Build branch click the link below:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/704510/discussions/3/2381701715712468002/

Additional information on submitting bug reports:
http://www.mercuryfallen.com/bug-reports

Testing Info

• Please keep all bug reports, feedback and discussion to this thread, the test-build discord channel or in a direct email to [e-mail]
  
• If you report a bug/issue, please provide details on how I can cause the bug/issue to occur. Provide as much relevant information as you can. If I can’t see it, I can’t fix it.
  
• If you submit a bug report related to the test build via email, please state you are using the test build.
  
• In addition to bugs/issues please let me know what you like or dislike regarding any new features.

Known Issues

• N/A

Latest Changes/Fixes :: TB-9

• Added Battery Booster equipment, recipe, research and discovery
  
• Added Deselect all Gather Plants to gather menu
  
• Reduced button hover sound effect
  
• Removed Change: Colonists will no longer use the medi-bed if there are no colonists assigned the doctor profession
  
• Removed Change: A Colonist will no longer use the medi-bed if they are the only colonist assigned the doctor job assigned
  
• Fixed: Colonist not leaving medi-bed if medi-bed is disabled
  
• Fixed: Starting stasis capsule(s) spawning facing walls
  
• Fixed: Missing Header on harvestable items
  
• Fixed: Harvestable section button not updating when clicked
  
• Fixed: Missing language strings

Release Notes

World Generation

• New world generation with new starting conditions
  
• Added naturally spawning underground plants which can be harvested using the new harvest plant action. Naturally spawning plants will spread over time.
  
• Mineral compound no longer acquired from mining dirt
  
• Added stone which can be mined for mineral compound

New Starting Conditions

• New game no longer starts with pre-built starting setup machines
  
• Initial power generation comes from the surface side facility. Building an elevator will allow access to solar power.
  
• Updated starting tutorial tasks
  
• Starting supply chest contents changed

Colonists

• Replaced male and female colonist models
  
• Updated look of colonist outfit
  
• Added new hair style for male and female colonists
  
• Minor change to colonist skin colors
  
• Female and male colonists now have separate animations
  
• Updated existing colonist animations
  
• New animation and particle effect for plant crop action
  
• Robots now show out of power hover icon when needing to recharge

Power System

• Complete rewrite of the electric power system
  
• Machines no longer consume power unless they are in operation
  
• Surface side facility now generates power from built in solar panels. Surface power generation can be used in the facility via the elevator.
  
• Added Small and Large Batteries for storing power
  
• Added new research projects related to power generation and storage
  
• Updated power generation section in game guide

Misc

• Surface Map now visible after constructing elevator
  
• Map Table now only required to perform expeditions
  
• Added keybinds for tilt camera up/down. Defaults to page up/page down.
  
• Damaged walls are now deconstructed and not mined
  
• Mine button renamed to Gather. Icon also changed
  
• Added Harvest Plant selection under new Gather section
  
• Assignable beds was accidentally added in a previous update without being fully integrated. Colonists will now sleep in an assigned bed and ignore a bed if it’s assigned to someone else. Colonists will sleep in an unassigned bed if they don’t have one assigned.
  
• Raw storage container can now store fuel items
  
• Starting tutorial tasks now show tooltip on hover instead of sliding open the task description
  
• Reduced amount of resources acquired from some mineable objects
  
• Updated various object descriptions
  
• Updated some object construction requirements
  
• Various code changes to support future content still in development

Fixes

• Fixed: Object/Colonist portrait image showing outside icon area
  
• Fixed: Constructed doors rotated the wrong way
  
• Fixed: Light color picker clipped off screen
  
• Fixed: Main menu not functional if unable to load mod config file

[Boogey]

The changes sound good for TB3. I've liked the new power management, making power to be "more" than just do and forget. Also having less minerals has been a good thing, but there indeed has been too few close to the starting positions. Player should also be given reminder/incentive/path to go up early enough.

It's shaping nicely.

[scimuse]

DAY 27

noticed one toon taking physical damage in a bed while sleeping. 2 beds 2 toons. the toon taking damage was the doc and seconed in the assignment list. this happened last game but i didn't realize it til now. this is what led up to doc trapped in healing bed last time. assigned and immediatly unassigned bed and it works ok now.

power worked ok for a while. i always put down 2 batteries. installed nightstands and they never worked. things were fine other than that til i installed crafting upgrade in tech printer. then the system stopped seeing the batteries. it may have been coincidental with both batteries being fully charged.

note. while starting fresh map there was considerable lag in the selection screen. changing map sizes and difficulty both had a lot of lag. never had that before.

once i restart game i will report if reload fixed any of above issues.

edit day 61

nightstands working but newly placed ones don't.
can't get ordered vehicle built, rover in particular. don't know if its same for other vehicles yet.
surface is not seeing the built map table. says map table offline. table is fine.
surface is not seeing stored energy. 2 full small batteries.
ordered vehicle not present in tasks list.

upon reload energy issues didn't exist however batteries would not recharge till completely depleted. from a gameplay pov i am over the novelty of the new energy network and feel it presently is more of an annoyance with its misbehavior. if it worked as designed it would be fine with me.

edit day 77

cant get game to recognize map table(s). can not progress. the table is working properly. i did manage to get a doge and a rover built on reload. the table is reflecting the surface exploration properly. can not order an exploration team. i have cooked food and plenty of people. i have com officer and hot spots marked to explore. from the tab in the surface it says map table offline.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

"Deconstructing damaged walls instead of mining them" - While I like that in theory, it isn't nearly as nice as being able to drag the mine tool over all walls and not worry about deconstructing the good walls.

Perhaps in the long run it would be a good quality of life feature to have two buttons for deconstructing. One that is only for "damaged walls." This would allow you to use that tool to only deconstruct the damaged walls while leaving the good ones standing. And the regular deconstruct tool where it would take down all of the walls. Very minor thing or course!

[Nitrous Butterfly]

Originally posted by BlackSmokeDMax:

"Deconstructing damaged walls instead of mining them" - While I like that in theory, it isn't nearly as nice as being able to drag the mine tool over all walls and not worry about deconstructing the good walls.

Perhaps in the long run it would be a good quality of life feature to have two buttons for deconstructing. One that is only for "damaged walls." This would allow you to use that tool to only deconstruct the damaged walls while leaving the good ones standing. And the regular deconstruct tool where it would take down all of the walls. Very minor thing or course!

Yeah that's definitely one of those things that can go either way. I opted for the change as it seems like it makes more sense to new players to deconstruct over mine. In future there may be some improvements to controls in the area.

Originally posted by scimuse:

DAY 27

noticed one toon taking physical damage in a bed while sleeping. 2 beds 2 toons. the toon taking damage was the doc and seconed in the assignment list. this happened last game but i didn't realize it til now. this is what led up to doc trapped in healing bed last time. assigned and immediatly unassigned bed and it works ok now.

power worked ok for a while. i always put down 2 batteries. installed nightstands and they never worked. things were fine other than that til i installed crafting upgrade in tech printer. then the system stopped seeing the batteries. it may have been coincidental with both batteries being fully charged.

note. while starting fresh map there was considerable lag in the selection screen. changing map sizes and difficulty both had a lot of lag. never had that before.

once i restart game i will report if reload fixed any of above issues.

edit day 61

nightstands working but newly placed ones don't.
can't get ordered vehicle built, rover in particular. don't know if its same for other vehicles yet.
surface is not seeing the built map table. says map table offline. table is fine.
surface is not seeing stored energy. 2 full small batteries.
ordered vehicle not present in tasks list.

upon reload energy issues didn't exist however batteries would not recharge till completely depleted. from a gameplay pov i am over the novelty of the new energy network and feel it presently is more of an annoyance with its misbehavior. if it worked as designed it would be fine with me.

edit day 77

cant get game to recognize map table(s). can not progress. the table is working properly. i did manage to get a doge and a rover built on reload. the table is reflecting the surface exploration properly. can not order an exploration team. i have cooked food and plenty of people. i have com officer and hot spots marked to explore. from the tab in the surface it says map table offline.

Thanks for the reports. Will add some items to my fix list. :) The lag on the new game screen is due to the latest changes in world gen. Had hoped it wouldn't be that noticeable in the uploaded version, but there are some tweaks that can be done to bring back some performance in that area. :)

[BlackSmokeDMax]

Would you consider having the botanists prioritize working the fields over harvesting wild plants?

Or maybe just have them drop the harvested wild plant and go on to the next one. It seems like now they are harvesting one wild plant, bringing it all the way back to storage and then walking all the way back out to harvest one plant, and then haul it again!

Or maybe both things. I'm not sure, at least something to keep an eye on though.

[Nitrous Butterfly]

Originally posted by BlackSmokeDMax:

Would you consider having the botanists prioritize working the fields over harvesting wild plants?

Or maybe just have them drop the harvested wild plant and go on to the next one. It seems like now they are harvesting one wild plant, bringing it all the way back to storage and then walking all the way back out to harvest one plant, and then haul it again!

Or maybe both things. I'm not sure, at least something to keep an eye on though.

I would. In the next Test Build update botanists should prioritize constructed machines (crop field, aquarium etc.) over wild plants

[Boogey]

Imo - old walls you should be able to deconstruct or rebuild, never mine. And visually old walls should always look different from new walls, maybe giving a slightly worse yield on deconstruction BUT giving always ability (like any derelict) to research (a dim light comes on once done or something) towards similar results as POI-research.

[blacksunphoenix]

Hi again

A feedback on a new game (Mercury Challenge) that sadly ended at turn 49 because of lack of anthracite (even after deep mining all the underground map) I'm not able to build a miner on surface (missing steel lingot).

The lack of ressources to reach the surface and start mining must be solved because after 6 hours of game it is very frustating to be stuck !!
On TB2 if I remenber well the quantity was 10 and 50 in Deep Mining, on TB3 it's now 10 +25 DM
On the patch note you said that you increase the spots of ressources but if you decrease the quantity on DM your modification is totally useless and the problem of ressources remain the same!!!


Other feedback

At the beginning, the lack of bioplastic to build the charge pad for the robot is not very convenient especially if you follow the tutorial. The bio refiner is built nearly at the end and at this time the energy of the robot is already depleted.

The risk with the command "demolish" for the damaged wall is to also demolish a capsule with a colonist inside if you select an area not revealed while with mining it avoids this risk unless a capsule could not be dismantke if still occupied.

If you build a bio-refiner, a research station and a charge pad (125w+50w+50w) the system indicates than the solar power (250w) is not enough and the differents stations don't work properly.

[Nitrous Butterfly]

Originally posted by blacksunphoenix:

Hi again

A feedback on a new game (Mercury Challenge) that sadly ended at turn 49 because of lack of anthracite (even after deep mining all the underground map) I'm not able to build a miner on surface (missing steel lingot).

The lack of ressources to reach the surface and start mining must be solved because after 6 hours of game it is very frustating to be stuck !!
On TB2 if I remenber well the quantity was 10 and 50 in Deep Mining, on TB3 it's now 10 +25 DM
On the patch note you said that you increase the spots of ressources but if you decrease the quantity on DM your modification is totally useless and the problem of ressources remain the same!!!


Other feedback

At the beginning, the lack of bioplastic to build the charge pad for the robot is not very convenient especially if you follow the tutorial. The bio refiner is built nearly at the end and at this time the energy of the robot is already depleted.

The risk with the command "demolish" for the damaged wall is to also demolish a capsule with a colonist inside if you select an area not revealed while with mining it avoids this risk unless a capsule could not be dismantke if still occupied.

If you build a bio-refiner, a research station and a charge pad (125w+50w+50w) the system indicates than the solar power (250w) is not enough and the differents stations don't work properly.

Thanks for the great feedback :) Still working to balance the early game progression so it's not as much of a grind and/or impossible. Some fixes and resource tweaks are coming later today including stasis capsules dropping more bio-plastic for easier construction of charge pad and research station.

[Nitrous Butterfly]

Latest Changes/Fixes :: TB-4

• Botanists should now prioritize harvesting from built structures before harvesting wild plants
  
• Tweaked how power consumers receive power to reduce colonists flicking between using and not using a machine
  
• Updated Gathering Materials starting task description. Now references deconstruction instead of mining and proper colonist assignment
  
• Increased amount of coal from coal wall/floor tiles
  
• Robot charge pad no longer has a room restriction
  
• Reduced construction time of walls
  
• Reduced negative decor of dirt/stone floors -5%
  
• Stasis capsules now provide more materials when deconstructed
  
• Minor reduction to lag on new game screen when generating map
  
• Fixed: Load game crash if there are conduits placed at the edge of the map
  
• Fixed: Objects with avoid tiles not getting power if placed over existing power conduit. Affected standing lamp, nightstand and wall lights
  
• Fixed: Wall debris deconstructed immediately
  
• Fixed: Time of day resets to the beginning of the day when loading a saved game

[BlackSmokeDMax]

OH, the humanity, I NEED to start all over again! ;)

j/k of course, I love the beginning of these types of games!

[Nitrous Butterfly]

Latest Changes/Fixes :: TB-5

• Fixed: Damaged Walls showing as needing to be constructed after loading a saved game
  
• Fixed: Power conduits providing power before being constructed

[scimuse]

new game. this is before the latest update.

1. i was wrong about toons taking damage while using beds. it looks like damage but they are healing.

2. day 80 on new save still can't get map table to work. can't send out expeditions, can't research anything that needs the stuff gotten by expeditions. what am i missing?

3. initial lag was considerably improved. yay

4. stone doesn't have an icon when you click select it. it has a question mark with a red x.

5. batteries still pretty useless. sometimes they do what they should and sometimes they don't. often enough that i will not get any batteries. i go straight for coal and thermal.

6. feedback, on a large map resources are fine if patient. iron was a little scarce this time. copper was fine.

[Nitrous Butterfly]

Originally posted by scimuse:

new game. this is before the latest update.

1. i was wrong about toons taking damage while using beds. it looks like damage but they are healing.

Ah yes. They will slowly heal when sleeping and will flash green.

Originally posted by scimuse:

2. day 80 on new save still can't get map table to work. can't send out expeditions, can't research anything that needs the stuff gotten by expeditions. what am i missing?

Looking into this issue. Hopefully should have a resolution in the next patch update.

Originally posted by scimuse:

3. initial lag was considerably improved. yay

Excellent.

Originally posted by scimuse:

4. stone doesn't have an icon when you click select it. it has a question mark with a red x.

Thanks for the report. Added to my list.

Originally posted by scimuse:

5. batteries still pretty useless. sometimes they do what they should and sometimes they don't. often enough that i will not get any batteries. i go straight for coal and thermal.

Hmm. Will have to run some more tests. Do they just stop storing/providing power randomly?

Originally posted by scimuse:

6. feedback, on a large map resources are fine if patient. iron was a little scarce this time. copper was fine.

Good to know. Additional resource tweaking expected.

Thanks for the feedback on the latest update. :)

[silverfang17]

Tested with new built. I'll just bullet point here what i find as I go to the game.
-Small batteries won't discharge when they are fully charged. The total network power stored shows zero even if the small battery is full.
-Small batteries immediately works after just laying on blueprint mode.