Greetings curators!
I want to say one last time, thank you all for the amazing response to the launch of Deep Freeze last month.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2574770/Megaquarium_Deep_Freeze__Deluxe_Expansion/
If anyone has enjoyed the expansion, please consider leaving a review on the store page. ːsteamthumbsupː
For the last few weeks I've been working on an update based on all the feedback I've received from the community. I've focused on frequently requested features that could be implemented in a reasonable timeframe. Let's take a look!
Sortable staff
As I briefly introduced in last week's post, it's now possible to sort the staff management table by: status, zone, skills and accessory.
As this was a highly requested feature, I'm sure the community already has ideas on how to maximise this feature. Here's what I could come up with myself:
- Sort by highest active skill to make mass levelling up quicker. Just work your way through all the feeders, then the fixers etc. No more hunting for the right button to press.
- Sort by zone and then check the 'status' column to see if anyone is idle near the end of the day or visa versa. This insight can be used to rebalance your staff zoning so you're maximising each staff member's productivity.
- Similar to above, sort by 'status' to easily see if you have idle staff who can be put to better use.
- Sort by 'accessory' to quickly find staff who haven't been assigned an accessory yet.
In my own playtesting I found this feature especially useful when paired with...
To overlap or not to overlap
Before now, it's not been possible to place the same area in more than one zone. When you added an area to new zone, it was removed from any zone it was currently assigned to.
With the latest update there is now a setting in the Options which, when enabled, will allow your zones to overlap.
I prevented zones overlapping in the original design because I thought having lots of overlapping zones might be confusing for players. Plus, if I'm honest, I didn't understand the use case for this feature... until now.
You see, zones are really useful for stopping your staff from wasting too much time walking. That's because, while staff do prioritise nearby tasks, if the only task available is far away, they'll still do it.
However, it can be quite painstaking to balance your zones perfectly so that staff idleness is minimised, especially for your fixers, because equipment breakdowns are semi-randomised.
I personally found overlapping my fixer zones helped deal with breakdown spikes, while retaining the advantage of zoning, that is: reducing the amount of time spent walking between tasks.
Not to mention, overlapping zones makes it easier to zone the separate jobs (gift shop, cleaning etc.) because each zone is essentially on its own layer, independent of all other zones.
So I'll say it: I'm a convert! And I suspect I'm only beginning to scratch the surface of what can be done.
Let's reconnect
A quick one to finish with. When you pick up and move a tank, any pumps, compressors and posters that were connected to it before you picked it up will reconnect with it when you place it down (assuming they are still in range!).
This will hopefully make tweaking your aquarium layout a more rewarding experience. :)
A final word
That's just the big hitters, as usual there are many bug fixes, balance changes and general improvements. Full changelog below.
Just before I go, there are still a few hours left to nominate Megaquarium for Steam's 'Labor of Love' award. If you haven't voted yet, please consider casting your vote using the link below.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/600480/announcements/detail/3864713384553759932
Thanks and enjoy!
Tim Twice Circled
Changelog
- Feature: You can now sort the staff management table.
- Feature: Added setting to the options to allow zones to overlap (default is off).
- Feature: Pump, Compressors and Posters reconnect automatically when you move a tank, if the tank is still in range.
- Balance: Abyssal animals can now be unlocked with Ecology in 'Everything Available' mode in Sandbox.
- Balance: Abyssal animals cost much more Ecology to unlock than regular animals.
- Balance: Improved several Deep Freeze Sandbox objectives so they are easier to trigger.
- Balance: Reduced the number of animals required to fulfil some of the hardest Deep Freeze Sandbox ARG objectives.
- Balance: Staff feed the lowest health animals first.
- Balance: However, animals do not regain health unless fully fed (partial feeding is not enough).
- Balance: Supplement Manual bonus increased from 40 -> 60.
- Balance: Dictaphone bonus increased from 20% -> 25%
- Balance: Deep Freeze level 2, otter objective, science requirement reduced to 190. Added '(Check end of message)' to the otter sub-objective.
- Balance: Deep Freeze level 1, the message about observation pops up as soon as you place the Antarctic Sea Pig.
- UI: Renamed Mirror Anthia -> Mirror Anthias. Purple Queen Anthia -> Purple Queen Anthias.
- UI: Changed "Roles" to "Skills" on individual staff window.
- UI: Squeezed out a bit more width for skill name in staff management table (helps non-English localisations).
- UI: Slightly increased the height of the staff window.
- Fixed bug: Plant Destroyer and Breeding function in Passive Mode when they should be disabled.
- Fixed bug: Wrong tooltip on light icon on tank window.
- Fixed bug: Incorrect access points on Medium Beach Tank, Island Beach Tank and Small Polar Dome.
- Fixed bug: Too many overlapping containers on Medium Beach Tank and Island Beach Tank.
- Fixed bug: You could place underwater decorations under the cliffs on Small Polar Dome and Mega Polar Dome.
- Fixed bug: You could build a bridge through a Large Abyssal Tank.
- Fixed bug: Lines to connected Compressors were not shown when you hovered over the tank.
- Fixed bug: When placing a new Compressor, invalid tanks were highlighted when they should not have been.
- Fixed bug: 'dev mode' level up staff button works again.
- Fixed bug: freeze when you try to connect a pump or compressor to a tank before it has finished animating in.
- Misc: When mods are copied from Steam's folder to My Games\Megaquarium\ we do the copy and rename in one method call rather than 2. Hoping this reduces chance of permission issue occurring.