Hello Node Farmers!
The first update this year is live - v1.7!
This time I focused more on QoL improvements, addressing feedback and game balance adjustments.
Let's take a look at the changelog:
Major changes
- New: priority roads added - they are used to control the priority of the paths chosen by transports. The produced resource finds all available consumers, groups them by priority, and tries the highest one first. If not possible - it tries another priority group etc. Sounds complicated but I think it is rather intuitive. Markets have "-1" priority by default so it will sell resources only if they are not needed anywhere else with higher priority (can be configured on click).
- Change: Resources/dishes are sold even if they are not on the price list. They have their lowest price in that case (the lowest you can select in the price switch).
- Change: instant chests - I removed all previous algorithms for chest optimization and just made them try to send resources instantly. As a result, they are sending resources before the production nodes, so they are more useful as a buffer. I've seen that in some specific farm layouts, they can still race with other storages, but it may be not the case in most of the cases. (fixed in v1.8 - now there are no issues)
- New: throughput meter node - a new node that counts resources that go through it and can trigger a signal based on the thresholds you configure.
- Improvement: multiselect improvements - now you can hold CTRL+SHIFT for more advanced multi node selection. You can start on other nodes; the selection is not resetting, so you can select nodes in different places with a few mouse drags; you can deselect selected nodes if you try to select them again - it works like in other similar tools. Additionally, the selection is not automatically removed after placement.
- New: bonus islands - you can buy an additional island when the boss island is on the map. On each meta progression page, you can increase a bonus island value (max 6 for now). Useful if you are stuck with no more space or required island type to finish a boss.
Minor changes
- New: autoconnection can be enabled/disabled in the settings.
- Improvement: The grid/islands/nodes are more aligned now. Small nodes are smaller to fit the grid. I missed this one before for some reason. As a side effect - small nodes on previous saves may be a few pixels shifted up compared to new nodes. It can be fixed manually by disabling autoconnection and CTRL+LMB click all small nodes on the old farms - just in case you find it annoying.
- Change: The one-way road is moved to the "roads" category instead of utility.
- Change:The market can be placed on the water - why not?
- Change: I rebalanced low dish prices a little (more income)
- Change: The "With Filter" option in the price switch is enabled by default now.
A short video showcasing the changes:
Watch on YouTube
In the next updates, I would like to focus on adding copy/paste/cut + blueprints. I made some first checks and it looks like it will be available this week.
Later - I would like to work on a new playing mode - "Big Farm". I am not sure about the name yet, but the idea is to let players build one big farm and unlock progression in the run separately from the metaprogression of the roguelite mode. Something more similar to other factory builders. It will be a totally separate mode and a big change compared to the previous modes.
It will be a little challenging as I will have to optimize and adapt algorithms to support much bigger farms without performance issues, but well - let's eat this elephant bite by bite! Wish me luck! :D
Thank you all for your support and have fun!