v0.8.04 - More Employees, Smarter Restocking Rules, and More

Hi everyone, 😄

Thank you very much for your continued support, bug reports, and feedback. With the factory area becoming larger and systems getting more complex, we’ve been focusing on improving scalability, employee reliability, and day-to-day quality of life.

This update delivers one of the most requested improvements: more employees, along with better control over storage targeting, smarter restocking behavior, and new configuration options that give you more flexibility without adding extra micromanagement.

Here is what’s included in this week updates:

Main Updates

1. 12 More Employees Added

Based on community feedback, many of you need additional help to manage the increasingly large factory area. With this update, we are introducing 12 new employees:

• 6 Production Assistants

• 6 Loading Operators

With more employees available, you can split responsibilities more effectively, reduce bottlenecks, and keep larger factories running smoother across multiple buildings and storage areas.

2. Box Packer Machine: Cold Storage Target Selection

With multiple Cold Storage rooms now available, we added a new control to help you organize where packed products are stored.

• Box Packer Machines can now be configured to choose which Cold Storage the output product should be stored in.

• This helps you organize production by area and keep certain product types routed toward specific storage locations based on your factory layout and workflows.

• The option Any Cold Storage is still available if you want employees to store items automatically based on availability and proximity.

3. Employee Restocking Behavior Update (Label / Packaging)

We updated employee behavior for restocking labels and packaging.

Previously, some players reported that employees tended to restock the same machines repeatedly. With this update:

• Employees now prioritize restocking based on which machine needs supplies earlier, rather than only choosing the closest machine.

• This new logic can override distance based selection, so machines that will run out sooner are handled first.

The goal is to make restocking feel more fair and consistent across multiple production lines.

4. New Employee Restock Rule Types (Label / Packaging)

We added a new structure to restock rules for Label and Packaging Employee Settings. You can now choose between two rule types:

• Minimum Threshold
  Employees will refill when the remaining amount is below the number you set.

• Limited
  Employees will refill up to a specific target amount you set.
  You can also choose whether this limit should reset daily or not, similar to how Limited production works on the Starter Machine.

This update was inspired by community feedback. Many of you liked the Starter Machine “limited” style behavior and requested similar control for labels and packaging to reduce overstocking and keep production more intentional.

Improvements

1. Vendor Truck Employee Settings: ESC Close with Confirmation

You can now close the Vendor Truck Employee Settings menu using Escape, as requested by the community.

• If you have unsaved changes, a confirmation popup will appear to ask if you want to exit and discard changes.

This keeps the ESC workflow consistent while still preventing accidental configuration loss.

2. Skip Animation When Picking Up Items from the Ground

We added the ability to skip the pickup animation when taking items from the ground.

This makes cleanup and repeated pickup actions faster and more comfortable.

3. Persistent Settings After Repack

We added state persistence for several machines when they are repacked and unpacked again.

Settings will now remain saved for machines such as:

• Box Packer Machine

• Splitter Machine

• Filter Machine

• and several other machines that use Employee Settings

This means your configuration will no longer be lost when you repack machines into boxes and place them again, making rearranging your factory much less repetitive.

4. Increased Item Limit Max: 480 → 1440

Based on community requests, we increased the maximum limit value you can set for employee supply targets:

• Maximum limit increased from 480 to 1440

We chose this number because it matches the current highest limit used by certain project requirements, giving you more flexibility for high-volume setups.

Bug Fixes

1. Fixed an issue where deploying a machine could automatically open the monitor if the cursor happened to be positioned directly over the monitor area.

2. Fixed the failed line indicator light not displaying red correctly when it should.

3. Fixed several missing translations from the previous update.

Once again, thank you very much for your ongoing support and detailed feedback. We are still tracking everything you share and prioritizing improvements based on feasibility and impact, while continuing to improve stability and performance as factories grow larger.

If you encounter any issues after updating to this version, please report them through the in-game Bug Report Menu and/or the Steam Discussions so we can investigate quickly.

See you in the next update! 🥗🚚