0.5.0 Patch Notes:
* Completely reworked the tutorial. Tutorial is now divided into 4 levels, each explaining one or two core mechanics of the game. EXISTING TUTORIAL SAVES WILL NO LONGER WORK. More info below the patch notes.
* Fixed an issue related to manually crafting items with x2 intermediary ingredients
* Rebalanced some mid to late game recipes and techs.
* Green DNA yields 2 instead of 1
* Yellow DNA yields 8 instead of 2
* Teal DNA yields 8 instead of 2
* T2 and T3 movers, miners, snatchers, fireflies now yield 2 instead of 1
* Reduced DNA costs of most military bonuses by a factor of 2, sometimes 3
* Reduced DNA costs of Wormpit, Drone Speed, Energy Carrier Charge Rate, Worker Bay Capacity
* Needle spires will now yield 2 per craft
* Added options menu to quickbar for configurable shortcut buttons. Most are disabled by default to prevent new players from accidentally interacting with advanced functionality. They will be put back automatically when the relevant tech is unlocked.
* Fixed pixel fighting when hovering over many stacked workers
* Fixed quickbar number shortcut having to press twice to register click
* Fixed grabber speed tech requiring red DNA twice
* Fixed resource deposits showing 10x less resources than they actually had. This was a visual issue with the tooltip only.
* Resource deposits now have 2x as much resources in default settings.
* Deconstructing a workstation now yields you its associated workers and any resources they may carry.
* Deconstructing a workstation via drones keeps old behavior where associated workers become idle so they can go work somewhere else, but movers inventories are now cleaned out just like snatchers.
* At least one gold mine will now always spawn within the visible area of the map.
* Alt mode will now display trail restrictions
* Added 2 new events: Low Power Output and Low Power Distribution that fire when game detects you don't produce enough energy or have enough fireflies respectively.
* Copying trails now copies restriction configuration
* Copying chest now copies chest configuration
* Fixed 3 rare cases for forge and assembler snatcher deadlock when paired in exotic combinations with grabbers and other spaghetti configurations
* Changed bloodfly's weakness to energy attacks from 200% to 20%. They are now much more effective against energy based robots.
* Removed lumber requirement for all lamps to encourage players to actually light up their base.
* Some German languages fixes are in, thanks to Dreayt!
So, what's up with the tutorial?
A bit of history on the tutorial... Late last year, we released the demo to a small group of playtesters. We had a form that people could choose to fill to provide feedback, and one of the questions was 'How balanced was the tutorial?' The options were too easy, slightly too easy, perfectly balanced, slightly too hard and too hard. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the idea. We got 4 slightly too easy asnwers, 4 slightly too hard answers and 1 perfectly balanced answer. I took this as the best, most perfectly designed tutorial in the world at the time... Even though there were questions and confusions on the Discord about certain things, I took that as general chatter related to a new game.
Now I realize the question should have instead been 'How helpful was the tutorial?', not how balanced. Anyway, live and learn.
The tutorial has been completely revamped with more focus towards player onboarding. The goal is for it to be as clear as possible, but of course without taking away the fun or to hand hold throughout the entire experience. That's why the new tutorial has been broken down into 4 levels. The older tutorial had too much of a gap between the first and second stage as I called it. Many people got turned off by the huge, inefficient and broken base in the second part of the tutorial. It tried to teach too much with too much. It also had way too much text. Watching people play on stream I realized some people don't really read things, especially if the game gets paused when a text appears on the screen. The new tutorial doesn't pause the game as much and even has less objectives in total than the previous tutorial. It also introduces a chat feature where the Symbiote talks to itself, trying to figure out what to do and how to do things. This is meant to guide players in the right direction without being a burden on the gameplay.
The first level will teach you about mining and snatchers and is designed for maximum hand holding experience. Yes, that includes WASD and telling you you can use the mouse wheel to zoom. It should be a ~5 minute experience.
The second level should be around ~12 minutes and will teach about movers and a bit of combat. This is also where the sandbox experience starts after a few scripted objectives but is very limited in scope. Just build a few depots and forges and acquire some raw resources.
The third level is all about energy and genetic codes. Again, starts with a very small base and teaches you how energy works in Swarmdustry. This should be around 30 minutes of gameplay.
The fourth level is about worker bays and jumpers and provides an actual, somewhat optimized base factory to begin with. It will show you how you can have 2 energy networks and just one of the use cases of how you can use a worker bay. I wish the tutorial could show you more, but this time I have to keep it simple. Someone wise once said make the game easy to learn, hard to master, not hard to learn. Or something like that. Anyway this last level may be anywhere between 30min to 2 hours depending on how hard you automate.
Hopefully this new tutorial will provide a better experience than the old one. I encourage everyone, even existing players, to try out the new tutorial. You might learn a few new things too!
Thanks everyone who has provided feedback and suggestions!
The Swarm must grow.