Rewrite Devlog #10

Number 10 in the title suggests that this is the October's edition of the rewrite devlog, showing off some of the features and improvements in the new version of Alien Horizon, that is remade entirely from scratch. Unfortunately, it's pretty much settled that the January release is not gonna be made, so set your expectations to April instead.

In this devlog, we'll take a look at changes to mining, resource production and life support.

Production

The biggest change is that, just like construction, production is now running continuously, instead of only progressing on top of the hour. Originally, the hourly updates were supposed to improve performance, but it turned out to just create huge spikes of activity every hour. The new implementation is actually significantly more performant, because it's only updating when the player is looking and just has a scheduled finish time when unobserved, not performing any actions until that.

Because factories finish production at various times, the strain they put on logistics is much more evened out.

Preparation time is a completely new feature. When switching between different recipes in a queue, some factories and some recipes require a preparation/retooling time, when the factory doesn't produce anything and only prepares the machinery for the new production. This can take a couple of hours and is meant to discourage too much switching between recipes in some buildings.

Some good examples are the Compact Assembly Plant, which requires 4 hours of retooling when switching between the different products, while on the other hand, the Universal Fabricator's units do not require retooling between those same recipes, making them significantly more versatile in cases you want to produce small batches. Another example is the Farm, which doesn't require preparation time for most of its crops, except for fruit and palm fruit, which need some time to grow before they start producing - it's a good idea to have some farms dedicated to just fruit and just palm fruit production.

Plants

Speaking of plants, they are now grown a bit differently. There's still the regular production part, with the same UI factories have, but the production speed depends on Growing conditions in the Greenhouse or Farm. Production speed doesn't directly depend on the structure's (and thus workers') productivity, but productivity improves the growing conditions, which subsequently affect the production speed. By default, greenhouses only have one shift that provides this productivity, but thanks to the improvements to shifts that we've discussed previously, you can add additional shifts to improve growing conditions beyond 100%. Beware that there are diminishing returns, though - 2 shifts settle at around 140% and three shifts at 160%.

Growing conditions also depend on available water and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is taken directly from the building's life support system, as colonists are breathing it out. When supplied with these resources, grown plants produce oxygen, biomass and waste water, but the most game-changing part is that the oxygen is also directly deposited into life support, bypassing life support ancillaries and facilities. This means that with enough plants, you don't actually need to provide oxygen through life support, especially since plants growing in parks also have this function.

Life support

Resources present in life support are no longer inside each individual building, but rather shared by all buildings connected in the life support grid. This is what allows plants to work the way they do, spreading the oxygen to the rest of the life support grid. Newly built structures also no longer have to wait for pressurization.

Colonists that are outside in space suits keep their connection to the last life support grid they visited. This should prevent deaths caused by colonists being too far or getting stuck and running out of oxygen and also allows them to work in buildings that have no life support. For example, the Mining Drill no longer has life support, eliminating the inconvenient exception of having just one building for which life support connection was optional.

Suffocation and dehydration are also no longer a binary (Suffocating? Yes/No), but rather a spectrum - as the level of oxygen in life support system goes down into yellow area, it starts having a negative effect on colonists' health, however, colonists also lower their oxygen consumption in this case, eventually creating an equilibrium at a lower level, which is not ideal, but unless it goes down all the way to the red area, it's not necessarily deadly.

Mining

Mines now work more similar to production buildings - they also allow for queues, switching between different resources to mine.

Mining drills can also mine water from lakes if placed on a tile that's at least partially flooded, even if the water is frozen.

Steam post imageWater Pumps are a new way of getting water. Simply place a pump on the shore, a water intake is the lake and connect them using pipes. They allow pumping of water at unprecedented scales, but beware that a water intake doesn't work if the lake is frozen thick, so make sure you have adequate water reserves before winter.

The pumps also work as water distribution facilities, pumping water into life support. Unlike life support facilities, they can't recycle waste water (a dedicated building for that will be added later), but along with plants generating oxygen, they can fully replace life support facilities eventually.

Next time we'll take a look at storage and logistics. Make sure to visit the official Discord server to see any sneak peeks. I hope you've enjoyed this devlog and see you in November!