Hello Eco Citizens, big news: the long-awaited Eco 10 update is finally in playtests! We've added a ton of features (over a full year's worth of work), and we're introducing a lot of brand new systems as well as lots of polish.  Release date is currently 'when it's ready', but goal is well-before the end of the year.  With all the new additions, we want to adequately test it with large groups to make sure they're balanced. So over the coming weeks we're going to be doing blog posts on all the new things to expect. Here's the agenda: [b]- Boats and Trade (This blog)[/b] - Coastal construction - New avatars - Face tracking avatars - Photography/painting - New graphical improvements - Expanded tech tree - Twitch plugin - Towns, Countries, and Federations - Culture We’ll kick it off with the first blog on Boats! [h2]Boats and Trade in Eco 10[/h2] [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/22d53d415854cff15dcee1199c22a18851fdd3a3.jpg[/img] One of our most anticipated additions, and for good reason! Boats will not only introduce a whole new way of getting around the world, but will introduce the need for new trade gameplay, as its combined with our resource-spawning upgrades also shipping in 10. [h3]Isolated Resources[/h3] With Eco 10 we’ve totally changed how plants and resources spawn. Previously, they were pretty spread out all over the map: if a plant could grow somewhere, it would. No longer, now things will spawn in clusters around the map, which may be just a few spaces, or even one. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/a4fe0ce663dbbf6a2699db8b91039791349ec147.png[/img] As visualized on the screenshot above, clusters are representative of an area where plants are allowed to populate on the initial world generation, these contain the individual groups of plants and as the red indicates, this is the distance limitations between each group inside the cluster. We now have the ability (as do you players since these are all set inside the individual plant) to add more dynamic restrictions and scarcity of each plant species on a whole new level then what was technically possible in previous iterations. This means that there may be resources that are native to a specific island or on the other side of the world, and to get access you’ll need to build trade ships and sail to distant locales. And these islands will certainly lack resources from the mainland, so you’ll have much to offer in trade. Combined with the new Towns and Countries system, very interesting things can happen. A town might gain exclusive access to a resource, like oil or gold, or a rare plant that’s needed for research. That resource is then beholden to the laws of the town, and the town can wield a lot of trading power in the wider world. You see this in real life in places like oil-rich countries, the scarcity of a resource can greatly impact the cultural fabric of the societies built atop them. Really looking forward to seeing how this all plays out. And connecting them all are a progressive series of boats, here’s the line up of what you’ll be able to sail the seven seas of Eco with: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/3e45c2ca2f00662bdd8e98bd90b444c24d59f838.jpg[/img] Small canoes are the carts of the oceans, allowing you to transport a medium amount of goods while you discover the oceans of Eco. They are the first type of boats available to you. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/ea42c2c387b78319988c04cd550841eea48170da.jpg[/img] The large canoe is an upgrade to the small canoe, holding more storage and allowing two players to go on a journey together. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/f5ae454759c2db9cd523f5d25861c058a4699c8e.jpg[/img] Wooden transport ships have the storage capacity of a truck with decent speed and are very suitable for transportation purposes. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/5b12dd85d83bd5aebdf7b058ea6014da08aa1429.jpg[/img] The Wooden Barge can hold up to two trucks and is very useful to transport your goods from one island to the other. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/f059ee0fc46180add9b291a5916b2afe2a3f95ea.jpg[/img] With the introduction of the Medium Fishing Trawler you will be able to fish comfortably and directly on the oceans. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/be88fdd09afc576a0437515903b34acc00bf017c.jpg[/img] The Industrial Barge is an upgrade to the Wooden Barge and our currently biggest ship, it can carry up to four trucks at once. To make boats more useful, we’ve introduced limits to swimming as well. You can now ‘drown’ and wake up exhausted on the shore if you run out of calories while swimming, and swimming itself will expend calories. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/25097638/22d53d415854cff15dcee1199c22a18851fdd3a3.jpg[/img] This means no more swimming across continents (and you can’t eat while swimming, you would get a stomach ache as everyone knows). This will make boats and coastal port towns very important to global advancement, as they may be the only route to circulate an important resource to the rest of the world. Note that this can be disabled, like all new systems we will add, so players can configure the world their community wants to play in. Stay tuned for more updates as we build up towards launch, and feel free to drop us a line in the discord! - John K, CEO Strange Loop