Welcome back, Explorers!
We're continuing our journey into the heart of The First Explorers' mechanics. In previous blogs, we touched upon gathering resources and setting up basic production. Today, we're going to delve into something truly vital for your growing settlement: food, meals, and the very people who make your economy hum – your Carriers!
These systems are deeply interconnected, forming core loops that will dictate the pace and success of your expansion.
Make sure to read until the end: there might be something interesting regarding an upcoming playtest ;)
Now let's pull back the curtain on what's been cooking!
The Cook's Culinary Crusade: Your Shopping Tour
At the heart of your settlement's more complex food needs is the Cookhouse and its diligent Cook. Unlike basic raw food which often goes directly from storage to miners, Meals require preparation. And before a meal can be cooked, the ingredients must be collected.
This is where the Cook Shopping Tour comes in!
When there's an open request for a meal (either from a Tavern needing to attract new Carriers or a Production Building wanting an efficiency boost), a Cook needs to gather all the necessary ingredients for that specific meal before they can start cooking.
(Building Marketstalls close to Cookhouses is essential for short walking distances)
Your Cook will determine what ingredients are needed for the requested meal and then embark on a shopping trip to your Market Stalls. This isn't a quick stop; they visit each required Market Stall one after another until their basket is full.
To ensure the ingredients are still there when they arrive, a neat system is in place: as soon as the Cook leaves the Cookhouse, the necessary items are reserved at the Market Stalls. No more frustrating moments where the ingredient vanishes just as your Cook arrives! ;)
(Cook just left his Cookhouse to collect ingredients. He even has a shopping basket)
Once all ingredients are collected, the Cook heads back to the Cookhouse to begin meal preparation.
Strategic Tip: This sequential shopping tour highlights the importance of your settlement layout. Placing your Market Stalls close together, ideally in a centralized "marketplace" location, significantly reduces travel time for your Cooks and speeds up meal production.
Simple vs. Advanced Meals: Catering to Needs
We have two primary categories of prepared food: Simple Meals and Advanced Meals. Both serve crucial purposes, but they differ in complexity and effect.
(UI showing the two possible lanes - Cooking Lane for Simple Meals and Advanced Meals)
The key difference lies in their ingredients and the benefit they provide.
- Simple Meals: Require fewer ingredients and are easier to produce early on.
- Advanced Meals: Require more ingredients, including beverages in later tiers, making them a higher-tier good.
But why produce one over the other? Their effect is where they truly diverge, particularly when it comes to attracting new carriers... which brings us to our next point.
Meals Evolve: Requirement Changes Through Settlement Tiers
As your settlement grows and advances through its Tiers, so too does the sophistication expected in your Meals. The ingredient requirements for both Simple and Advanced Meals increase with each Settlement Tier.
Think of it like this: Early explorers are happy with simple fare, but as your settlement becomes more established, the populace develops a taste for more varied and complex dishes.
This tiered system means your production chains for food and beverages must evolve alongside your settlement to keep your population happy and growing.
Population, Residences, and Strikers: The Workforce Engine
Every economy needs a workforce, and in The First Explorers, one of the most versatile inhabitans are your Carriers. You'll always need more of them as your settlement expands!
There are several ways to attract new Carriers to your cause:
- Building Residences: The most fundamental way. Completing a Residence construction instantly spawns a handful of new Carriers.
- Meals in Taverns: Providing prepared meals in your Taverns is a key method for direct carrier recruitment.
- With Coins: Through Harbors and Caravan Outposts, you can attract neutral Carriers using coins
Let's look closer at the first two methods and how they tie into the food system.
Residences: More Than Just Beds
Residences are crucial! Not only do they provide a specific amount of beds each (and yes, every Carrier needs a bed, or they go on strike!), but completing a Residence also provides an immediate influx of new Carriers.
(Six Residences and a Tavern in the center)
The number of Carriers you get per Residence built is directly tied to your Settlement Attractiveness (more on this soon!). The higher your attractiveness, the more people are eager to join your settlement when a new home is ready.
Residences also evolve with your settlement. When you advance to a new Settlement Tier, all your existing Residences automatically upgrade to the next level. This auto-upgrade is unique to Residences! After advancing to a new Settlement Tier, you're now only able to build the higher-level Residences that do cost more to build. Again, reflecting the increasing complexity of your settlement's needs. That's another factor to keep in mind, whether you want to advance early to the next Settlement Tier or prefer to do that a later time. There's always a tradeoff!
Strikers: The Cost of Neglect
A critical element to manage is ensuring you have enough beds for your Carrier population. The number of available beds comes from your Start Landmark and all built Residences.
If you ever have fewer beds than Carriers, you have a problem: Strikers! Idle Carriers who don't have a bed will go on strike. To add a layer of challenge (and realism), the Carriers closest to where beds were lost (e.g., a demolished Residence) will strike first. Keep those beds available!
(Several Carriers are on Strike, because too few beds are available)
Taverns: A place to come together
Taverns play a vital role in attracting new Carriers directly through the power of prepared Meals.
As soon as a Simple or Advanced Meal is available in a Tavern, a new Carrier will spawn, consume the meal, and join your workforce! Advanced Meals will attract more carriers at once compared to the simple meal, which makes Advanced Meals significantly more efficient for population growth, justifying their higher ingredient cost.
Taverns can serve multiple Carriers eating meals simultaneously, and this capacity is also influenced by your Settlement Attractiveness. The higher the attractiveness, the more new recruits can be processed at once.
But Taverns aren't just passive receivers of meals; they are also key drivers of that all-important Settlement Attractiveness!
Settlement Attractiveness: The Magnet for Growth
Settlement Attractiveness is a global modifier that impacts several crucial aspects of population growth. It's a measure of how desirable your settlement is to potential new residents.
How do you increase it? The primary way is by placing Residences in the vicinity of a Tavern. The more Residences you have located close to your Taverns, the higher your Attractiveness Level will rise.
(The Tavern just got built and the existing residences directly contributed to the settlement attractiveness - in this case six residences were needed for the first level up)
What are the benefits of achieving higher Attractiveness Levels? They are significant for population growth:
- More Carriers per Residence: As mentioned, you get more Carriers instantly when building a new Residence.
- More Simultaneous Eaters in Taverns: Your Taverns can process more recruits eating meals at the same time.
- More Carriers via Harbor or Caravan Outpost: The maximum number of Carriers you can recruit per ship at a Harbor or per caravan at a Caravan Outpost also increases.
Settlement Attractiveness is a global effect, so boosting it in one area benefits recruitment across your entire settlement. Be mindful, though – demolishing Residences near Taverns could decrease your Attractiveness Level!
Connecting the Loops
As you can see, these systems are deeply intertwined:
You need Carriers, since they're an essential puzzle piece in your economy. You get Carriers from Residences, Taverns and Harbors or Caravans. The number of Carriers you get from Residences and the capacity in Taverns depends on Settlement Attractiveness. Attractiveness is boosted by placing Residences near Taverns. Taverns need Meals to generate Carriers. Meals are made by Cooks who go on Shopping Tours for ingredients. Those ingredients come from your production chains, which needs... you guessed it... more Carriers!
Managing this cycle of growth, ensuring you have enough beds (Residences), boosting Attractiveness (Residences near Taverns), and providing sufficient high-tier Meals via Taverns and Production Buildings is a core challenge and reward in The First Explorers.
That wraps up our deep dive into Meals, Cooks, Population, and Attractiveness! I hope this gives you a clearer picture of these vital systems and how they work together to make your settlement thrive.
Upcoming Closed Playtest #1
As already announced in an earlier Dev Blog, there will be a first Closed Playtest for The First Explorers!
This Closed Playtest #1 will be limited to a small amount of people, making sure to have this first Playtest as efficient as possible. I will share the details about the application process in an upcoming Dev Blog, but I can tell you already when the Playtest will happen: From 26th of June until 30th of June. So mark your calendars if you plan to apply for the Playtest :)
There will be more Playtests in the future, so if you don't have time or you won't be selected, don't worry. There will be enough possibilities to playtest the game until we work our way to the Early Access Release.
---
And that's a wrap! What topic should we explore next? Let me know in the comments!
If you want to follow the game progress more closely, make sure to join the official Discord Server: At the end of each month I share a summary about what I worked on during the prior weeks.
Until then, happy exploring!
— Sebastian