After working on our last Major Update, Shared Workload for so long, we were excited to get started working on the what's next... And with that we are thrilled to announced that this next Major Update will be the 1.0 release for AutoForge, coming this Fall - this means we have some HUGE plans for it! These massive changes do come with some rebalancing & costs, but they'll be worth it. Let's dig into it!
One such change that we've had planned for a while now is a complete revamp of the method of resource mining. Resource Deposits as they are now - background tiles with stacked density that are harvested over and over, harvested with multiple drills - are being replaced with small clusters of Resource Veins. Acting like Wellsprings, Resource Veins have an infinite amount of resources to be extracted, with output limited to the single drill that is placed upon it.
This change alone is massive and has deep repercussions throughout the entire game. By making resources infinite it allows players to know exactly how many resources are available to them at any given point. This helps the player know exactly when they need to go out exploring for new resources. This also simplifies mining setups and allows for quicker upgrades & optimization.
AutoForge has already had an incredible amount of quality-of-life changes, but more is always better! Another incoming improvement helps deal with one of our other resource types - Fluids. We've heard your feedback and have been wanting to make pipe logistics more transparent so that players can actually understand how their Fluid networks are working and I guess, even more importantly... if they're working. Our first step to achieving this comes in the tasty form of "ports"; little windows that periodically appear on pipelines that will display what and how much fluid is traveling through each said line.
We have been wanting to review the balancing of the game for a while now and introducing Resource Veins coincided nicely with that. However, what was originally planned to be simply changing a few recipes and technologies has turned into much, much more. I have just finished working on all of this and can tell you that literally every single recipe, technology, farming and husbandry has been changed. I plan to do a deep dive into these changes between now and the 1.0 launch but for now I'll tease that the game's progression is going to be much smoother with rounder, crunchy numbers. In general, everything should be a lot nicer to deal with - the math is mathing a lot better and resources and recipes have a much more cohesive flow - more on this soon!
Now that we are finally heading towards full release after over two years in Early Access, we believe it is time to do our planned price increase. In early August we plan to increase the price of AutoForge from $19.99 to $24.99 (USD). We believe this new price will better reflect the quality of the game and brings it more in-line with other titles in the Factory Building genre. The Steam Summer Sale will likely be the last chance to pick the game up at the current price with a good discount - so don't miss it!
When 1.0 launches all previous saves will become unavailable to play on. We have done our best during Early Access to avoid doing save wipes with only one occurring for the 0.4 update. When this happens, we will still provide access to the latest 0.7 build for players to continue their old saves from if they wish to. For 1.0, starting everyone off on a new world allows us to make some dramatic changes to the game that we have been wanting to for some time now, so it'll be worth it!
Before we get too deep into 1.0 development, we also want to take advantage of being in Early Access one more time to get another round of feedback and hear about what's important to you. This will help guide us over the coming months and the survey itself should only take a few minutes.
Thank you in advance to all that take a moment to share their thoughts! Early Access has been a wonderful experience so far and AutoForge wouldn't be the same without all of YOUR valuable feedback!
We still have a lot of time between now and the 1.0 release and there's lots to cover, so we'll have more to share as we go down that road. For now, thanks for being with us on this journey so far! We can't wait to see AutoForge take its Full Release Form and so with that in mind...
Let's get building!
Jasson & James