Last time I promised the next post would be about the radio tower and quests. Keeping my word: it's all in the demo now.
What's new
Between runs there is now a base — the place your convoy returns to after a run, where you spend everything you risked hauling back.
Buildings. The Garage unlocks locomotives, the Workshop — wagons, the Arsenal — weapons, the Warehouse sets the storage cap, the Barracks decide how many people fit on the base, the Hospital heals, the Radio Tower brings in work. I deliberately avoided “+3% to something” buildings: each one gives you a mechanic the game simply doesn't have without it.
Foremen. Remember the specialists this was all about? Buildings level up with people, not money: to upgrade the Garage you need mechanics — named ones, with nicknames. Nut, Crutch, Sledge. You rescue them on the maps, they ride in the locomotive, and if you've turned the head of your convoy into a sieve — they can come back injured. A one-armed mechanic works worse than a two-armed one. Tested.
Workers. Besides the named ones there's a nameless pool of workers: they fill the buildings' staff and top up their output. Empty staff — the building runs at half strength. Just like real life.
Radio Tower and quests. The tower catches contracts from the airwaves: where to go, who to pull out, where something valuable is lying around unattended. This is the first iteration of quests — there will be more of them, and they'll get more story-driven.
About the autotests
Last time I wrote that I was automating the meta-game testing, because I'm solo and I make for a tired QA department. Well: it paid off. A significant share of this update's bugs were caught by automated runs, not players — exactly as intended.
An honest status report
The base, meta progression and the first iteration of quests are done and working. What's still missing is content: the demo has one enemy faction, and frankly, it's getting lonely. I'm now working on the remaining factions and bosses — that's the next big chunk.
What's next
The demo is still free and will keep growing until release. Come in, build, break things — and tell me what's wrong: I read every review. Wishlists and reviews help the project a lot. The next post, I hope, will be about a new faction.