Botanists, Thermal Engineers and Spark-Growers,
We were a bit too busy to do an October devlog so to make up for it, we’re gonna talk about two features this time and how they interlink with each other, Botany & Temperature Automation!
Botany
Botany is the next level of automation challenge in Oddsparks! So far, everything in the game uses the basic recipe concept. You input an amount of item A (and maybe also an amount of item B) and after a certain amount of time, the building consumes those items and outputs an amount of item C.
It sounds like a small change but Botany introduces new recipes with a progress bar. After all, growing a plant takes time! So now, to get the output item C, you’ll need to complete the recipe multiple times. For small plants, it’s only ten times, but for larger plants, it’s a hundred times! This means you’ll need to really work on your production lines delivering consistently to ensure that you’re growing your plant as efficiently as possible.
Small plants can be grown in the Greenhouse. You’ll need to feed each plant ten times, a five to fifteen minute period in total. Once they’re fully grown, you’ll get the literal fruits of your labour! You’ll be growing unusual plants in the Greenhouse like Fluted Coral Reef, Aether Flowers, and Fireshroom Colonies.
Larger plants are grown in the Arboretum. You’ll need to go to one of our new biomes, the Glacial Plateau, and find Aetheric Fissures to build them on. You'll be able to grow some very strange plants in the Arboretum like the Geode Reef, Copper Bamboo and Aether Tree.
Each of these big plants need to be fed a hundred times, and if a single recipe takes five minutes, growing a single plant can take over eight hours! Thankfully, they’re fed by a separate building, the Arboretum Feeder, and multiple feeders can connect to a single Arboretum. This means you can use eight feeders to cut the time it takes to grow a plant from eight hours to one hour, or even shorter, if you use more! Of course, this assumes your production line can handle that many feeders efficiently.
What will you do with the plants and what kind of automation puzzle will you have to figure out with your new plants? We'll talk about that another time, for now, let's talk about...
Temperature Automation
We’re also introducing new ways for you to get more efficiency. With names like Volcanic Cave and Glacial Plateau, these biomes are, as to be expected, also hot and cold. This heat and cold is actually great for your buildings!
It hasn’t mattered yet, but almost every recipe has an optimal temperature! All of the temperature information won't be visible until you complete a monument unlock. We try to keep things simple and use a very small scale, from -5 to +5.
So for example, anything made in the Aetheric Distiller recipes has an optimal temperature of +3. They work best in a warm environment to get rid of excess moisture. Meanwhile, the Furnace has an optimal temperature of -3. It heats itself up so much that it works best when it’s in a cool environment. As for the plants… well, that depends on the plants! Some plants, like the Fireshroom Colony, grow better in hot conditions and others, like the Fluted Coral Reef, grow best in cold conditions.
All your previous recipes have so far been working at 100% efficiency but by ensuring they’re at the right temperatures, you can make them work at 125% or even 150% efficiency!
You can achieve this extra efficiency by building them in the right environment, or managing the local temperature with a cooler or a heater. Coolers and Heaters can raise and lower temperatures by up to +2 or -2, but what’s important is that they don’t stack with each other, only cancel each other out! Two heaters next to each other in the woodlands won’t stack to +4. A heater and a cooler set at max will just create an overlapping area of 0. However, they do affect the current area temperature, so if you put one cooler in a -1 area, it will lower the temperature to -3.
If it sounds confusing, that's okay. You can quickly check at a glance what temperature things are, and therefore, what efficiency your production line is running at with the new temperature overlay!
Later, you’ll also get the Temperature Regulator which can reach more extreme temperatures and occupies less space, but requires fuel. You’ll need them to deal with new buildings and recipes that have extreme optimal temperatures of +5 and -5.
And of course, temperatures will also affect a building negatively. Placing the Furnace in the Volcanic Caves is a quick way to get it running at 75% or even 50% efficiency. With the new recipes that have extreme optimal temperatures, you can end up going all the way down to 0% efficiency!
Splitting up your base between hot and cold areas and using the heater, cooler and temperature regulator to manage the temperature of your base will allow you to reach a new height of automation that’s yet to be seen! It's especially important for your new plants and recipes, where that extra efficiency will allow you to get your production line running at a reasonable time.
That’s all for now but if you want more sneak peeks and WIPs, you can join our Discord. We look forward to showing you more very soon!