Hi friends, Slims here. Update 2 is finally ready for wider testing. Today, I'll be releasing the new content update onto the development branch in Steam. Anyone is welcome to try it out but bear in mind, the branch will be unstable during testing! If you do use this branch, please report bugs and gameplay feedback on the forums or at the [url=https://discord.gg/finalfactory]Discord[/url] so we can harden it for release! Update 2 is slated to go live on main September 2, and the game will have a major sale to go along with it. For now, lets go over all the major changes in this update! [h3]Mass Drivers[/h3] A new omni-directional logistics option has been added to the game in the Asteroid Science tier. This means you won't have to rely on up/down/left/right constraints of Cargo Drones for very long (although I believe they will still have their uses). Mass Drivers can fire items at high speeds to other Mass Drivers in range. Their throughput is high, with tier 1 MD's firing 24 items every 3 seconds, making them much faster than connectors alone. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43547551/5a3cc29ccea7d9c997374df5b0d0606f6bf6e473.gif[/img] You can set up Mass Driver relays to send items long distance as well. I've personally had a ton of fun using these suckers. Mass Drivers will use Capacitors to charge up and fire, so lets go over the new Capacitor mechanic now... [h3]Capacitors[/h3] Capacitors are a new structure that can store charge. Capacitors each have a limit of 10 charge, and each capacitor you attach to the grid increases that capacity by another 10. Charge is accumulated using excess power from a station, and discharged by specific items, such as Mass Drivers and.... Lasers. Lasers no longer require fuel! They instead will use charge from the station grid. In my opinion this makes their gameplay much smoother and they are just overall more fun to use. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43547551/ba03f9042d088f20ae243f1129a677eb11a2495a.gif[/img] I have long term plans to make capacitors more interesting and be part of more mid-late game automation puzzles. For now they will be used for Mass Drivers and Lasers. [h3]Game Rebalance[/h3] A lot of the negative feedback for the game comes from folks who struggle to get past the first few hours, with frequent complaints about stability and the various constraints on station design. I've come to the conclusion that the stability/heat/power trifeceta is just a little too restrictive and frustrating, especially for new players. There's also just too many mechanics thrown at the player too soon. The following changes will be made: [list] [*] Free stability will be further increased to allow more flexibility, and prevent the need for Station Cores in the early game. [*] Atomic Printers, Assemblers, and Ship Assemblers will no longer generate heat, but their base production speed will be greatly reduced [*] A new item, the Overdriver, will increase the speed of production of all attached assembler-type structures at the cost of heat and power [*] Solar Power will be buffed slightly to reduce the number of panels needed early game [*] Connector throughput has been increased substantially [*] Rearranged many techs and adjusted costs [*] Made power transmitters and receivers substantially cheaper to craft and with more power transmission capacity [*] Massively buffed power produced by Dyson Bots and reduced their crafting requirements [*] Station Core stability bonus can be applied by multiple cores, at reduced effectiveness (same with Stabilizer Artifacts) [/list] These changes will make it so players will not have to worry about heat and stability for the first few hours of the game. It has the added effect of greatly reducing the amount of crap you have to handcraft in the early game. Overdrivers will come into play as tier 1 science, and once placed will introduce the heat mechanic. I also wanted to relax the solar panel spam required early game, as that was a common point of frustration as well. [h3]Signal and Enemy Attacks[/h3] Currently enemy attacking logic is opaque and penalizes you for merely building more structures. This just feels bad! A new mechanic has been introduced: Signal. Many types of buildings will produce signal, but only when powered and active (so you won't get penalized for having inactive stations, especially useful when you are just designing and testing things). Signal will push out the more you have in an area. You will be able to see how far your signal is reaching in the map view. Any chunks that have enemies and signal are valid chunks for attack. This will give you a reasonable idea of where attacks might come from. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43547551/2cc8ec91dcddf3dfd8816d122d3f072b6fb7d3b8.png[/img] Signal dampeners have also been added. These can be attached to stations to reduce the signal emitted by that station by a flat amount, at the cost of heat and power. This will give players some options for mitigating how much they get attacked. [h3]Map Markers and Other Stuff[/h3] I've also implemented the ability to ad Map Markers to your map. This should help out with organizing your base! The Tech Tree UI has been enhanced to simply show the whole tech tree all at once, instead of subtrees. This, I think we can all agree, is just better. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43547551/7df6f9565927065903bf4c75e45b0bef3c5b485f.gif[/img] You can also now rename your blueprints and update their descriptions from the blueprint panel. In a previous post I mentioned Rail Guns. These have been put on the backburner for a couple reasons. As a mostly one-man show, I have to choose what I work on carefully. I decided to implement Mass Drivers instead of Rail Guns to enhance the factory gameplay more. Railguns need a lot of UX love, probably an alternate hotbar for ship weapons and controls. I'd like too expand the ship building capabilities but I feel it's not as important as addressing some of the core factory building and logistics concerns. Multiplayer is also a huge priority and there's just only so many resources available to me. The next few weeks we'll be doing a bunch of testing and hardening of all these changes, as well as implementing some more UI elements to support the new content. So again, please feel free to join the [url=https://discord.gg/finalfactory]Discord[/url] and poke me with suggestions and bug reports! Cheers! /Slims Just a reminder: if you're enjoying Final Factory, steam reviews help a bunch! 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