Howdy friends, 2026 is going by fast! Luckily the game development is really going great and we are getting closer to a ready to ship state.
Most of my main work recently has been cleaning up the progression, making sure all the technology and recipe unlocks make sense and polishing the automation mechanics so the challenge and complexity increase in a logical manner.
I've also made a few big improvements to the transfer tube mechanics. You can now build splitters to send ore to multiple furnaces, storage containers or other production areas. Now you can make all in one factories to produce parts automatically which is invaluable on harder difficulties.
In addition to splitters I also have smart splitters in the game now. That way you can filter out items in your production lines or create sushi belts to carry lots of different items. These are invaluable on Mars, where basic resources are scarce and can mostly only be created from scrap piles. Scrap isn't usable on it's own but you can build recyclers to process the scrap and output either a gear, wire or sheet at random. You'll then need to add smart splitters to filter out the correct parts for production.
Had a few other small fixes to the GUI and menus but nothing too major to list here.
Should have official playtests starting sometime this summer. I will definitely post an announcement when I'm ready to have people join! Thanks again for reading and have a wonderful summer!