Rewrite Devlog #11

Welcome to November's edition of the rewrite devlog, this month all about logistics and storage. The rewrite is the proper version version of Alien Horizon, as opposed to the preview alpha, which is more of a prototype. It's planned to be released sometime next year, currently most likely April, but this can still change, as it has in the past.

The general functionality behind storage and logistics is the same as in preview alpha, but there are a couple of new mechanics and usability changes.

Storage

The storage UI is mostly the same, but at the bottom, you may see indicators of two new mechanics: the adjustable number with the truck icon - maximum number of suppliers, and the progress bar with weight icon - processing load.

In preview alpha, whenever large amount of resources needed to be transferred from one storage to another, it created a huge traffic jam as all available cargo trucks were assigned to this job, especially when the distance very short. Here you can set maximum number of vehicles that can be assigned to logistics jobs that have this storage as either source or destination, so that these traffic jams no longer happen. The number isn't entirely strict and counts jobs from very far away as less than 1, so when resources have to be transferred from, for example, cargo ships, more vehicles can be assigned, because the risk of traffic jams is much lower in these cases.

Construction and landscaping sites have this supplier limits as well, although it is automatic and not adjustable by the player.

Processing load is only present in manned warehouses and is tied to productivity. It represents workers organizing and processing goods, so whenever resources are moved in or out of the warehouse, the load increases. When it reaches 100%, the warehouse can no longer use its conveyors and loading and unloading speed of vehicles slows down significantly. Processing load decreases over time depending on efficiency.

This mechanic replaces the slowdowns of loading and unloading speed that depended entirely on warehouse's current efficiency in preview alpha. Because it is now a bar, it allows saving up efficiency from earlier to be used later. Also, because you can now set working shift lengths and number, as mentioned in one of previous devlogs, low traffic warehouses can use fewer employees, while high traffic ones may require larger worker crews, which are available as an option for warehouses to increase their efficiency beyond 100%.

Storage settings

The biggest improvement to storage are the new settings options. Not only can you set the storage's priorities, but you can also ban it from supplying resources for certain purposes. For construction, maintenance and landscaping, you can set minimum priority the site needs to have to be supplied. Let's explain on some examples:

You have storage tanks with water connected to both life support ancillary and greenhouses. When you want to make sure at least one of the tanks saves water for life support, you can ban it from supplying agriculture.

You have a warehouse with construction materials. You want to make sure it keeps some just for maintenance so that construction sites don't hoover them all up, so you set it to ban supplying construction sites. Alternatively, you can allow construction sites, but only critical priority. Which means it won't supply regular construction sites, but if you set one to critical priority, it will be supplied.

One of the purposes that can be banned is distribution. This includes stores, so unlike preview alpha, when you want to have a reserve of palm oil for production of soap, you don't have to ban its use by colonists entirely using a law, but you can set one tank to high priority and ban it from supplying distribution. This tank will only supply industry, and when it's full, other tanks will be filled, which can then distribute the extra palm oil to colonists.

Just like in preview alpha, you can set rules for each resource - the maximum limit the storage can store of the particular resource, and the fill, which is basically a "keep between" rule - whenever the stored amount falls under the minimum, it gets refilled from lower priority storages, and whenever it goes above the maximum, it gets emptied to other storages. You can use fill to ensure a certain amount of a resource is always present in the storage.

Logistics

The biggest new feature involving logistics is that vehicles now experience wear, which means they no longer last forever. By default, vehicles wear out after 5 years of active working (idle time doesn't count), returning to garage and turning into a scrap resource. They are replaced automatically as long as you have extra packed vehicles. If you don't manage to get vehicle production up and running in time before you run out of vehicles in cargo ships, the scrap can be jury-rigged into fewer working vehicles in the Recycling Centre, just like most complex scrap materials.

You can see each vehicle's condition in the logistics office, but until it actually reaches 0%, it doesn't affect them in any way.

By default vehicles wear out at a 100% rate, but this is heavily affected by the logistics office's efficiency - high makes them last longer, while low makes them deteriorate faster. Designate worker shifts accordingly.

A big related change is that vehicles still perform their job when their logistics office's efficiency is low - it's only the wear that is affected (workers can't maintain them as well), which means office malfunctions aren't nearly as devastating for colony's logistics, as vehicles can still carry the resources necessary for their own offices' repair.

Vehicles also no longer need to return to the garage to recharge. This has been abstracted away and instead they take power from their garage continuously while operating. When a logistics office gets disconnected from power, the vehicles' speed is cut in half, but they still operate.

Sometimes a logistics vehicle can end up carrying resources it has nowhere to place. This can legitimately happen when the player fiddles with storage rules while resources are in transit. In preview alpha, this could result in vehicles, especially tankers, having reduced capacity because their storage was taken up by these resources. To combat this, logistics offices now have an overflow storage - a temporary storage vehicles can deliver such undeliverable resources to, and where they stay until space is available in proper storages.

The algorithm managing logistics has generally gotten significant improvements. For example, vehicles can during one trip take resources from several sources and deliver to several destinations, jobs can be assigned to nearby vehicles that haven't quite finished yet, but when they do, they're going to be the closest ones to the job's source, and jobs can be more readily split and merged as needed. Generally, this should mean fewer vehicles are going to be needed for the same logistics load.

Next devlog will be about changes to education and services and will arrive shortly before Christmas. You can also hop on the official Discord server to see extra teasers. I hope you've enjoyed this devlog and see you next month!