Hey everyone! I've just rolled out a new update focusing on utility tools, public multiplayer rankings, and some significant economy balancing to keep progression feeling rewarding.
Locate Anything with the Building Finder
As colonies grow, finding specific buildings across a massive hex grid gets tricky. To solve this, I've added a new Building Finder tool (accessible under the \"More\" drawer). Opening it lists all your placed building types and their counts. Tapping any row will instantly center the camera on the nearest instance and highlight all matches on the map for 30 seconds. Tap it again to clear the highlight.
Rival Commander Profile Cards
You can now click on any commander's name on the global leaderboards to view their public profile card. Want to see how your competition is doing? The profile card lists their level, flag, start date, and device platform (using privacy-safe labels like Windows PC or Android phone). It also highlights their colony achievements: lifetime playtime, tiles explored, buildings constructed, total power produced, and their daily contract rankings for today and yesterday.
Slower, Cheaper Factories (Balance Pass)
The pacing of mid-to-late game factories felt a bit too volatile, so I've scaled down the throughput. All factory recipe outputs and resource inputs have been divided by roughly 6.67. To match this change, building construction costs and power consumption have also been divided by 5. This makes factories slightly weaker/slower in terms of output per second, but significantly cheaper to get up and running, leading to smoother and more balanced economic pacing.
Battery Banks & Storm Power
I've refactored how the Battery Bank operates during extreme weather. It now consumes 10 MW to stay charged during normal operations, but will supply 100 MW of backup power to keep your grid stable when a dust storm hits and disables normal generators.
HUD Booster Indicators & Survey Revamp
A couple of quick booster card refinements to finish up the patch:
- HUD Countdown Timers: Active booster cards (like Production Boost and Survey Boost) now show dedicated status indicators and countdown timers directly on the top HUD bar, so you know exactly how much buff time is remaining.
- Survey Discount: The Survey booster has been changed from a speed multiplier to a cost discount (reducing survey cost per click by 50% for 60 seconds), giving you more controlled surveying at a cheaper rate.
Atmospheric Processor Finale Polish
I've simplified and polished the Level 20 Phase 1 finale. The completion checks for building and delivering resources for the Atmospheric Processor are now more robust, preventing duplicate resource consumption or double-billing bugs during the final level upgrade.
Let me know how the new features and balancing feel on the Discord or Reddit! Happy colonizing!