v0.3.3 - Maintenance & Visuals

This is a bigger patch with new maintenance mechanic and a ton of visual immersion improvements, with the distant horizons that makes the render distance up to 4km (old one was 512m max), ambient life and better fluid flow rendering.

FluxWerks v0.3.3 - 08-07-2026

New Features

• Machine Maintenance - Machines now wear down over time and need repairs to keep running. Wear speed depends on the biome, and harsh weather wears exposed machines much faster, so sheltering machines from the elements now pays off. Below 50% condition a machine runs slower, and at 0% it stops until repaired. New alerts warn you when machines are wearing down, and the wiki's new Maintenance page has the full biome and weather details.

• AddedRepair Packs - Two new craftable items restore machine conditionthe Basic Repair Pack (also hand-craftable) and the Advanced Repair Pack for higher-tier machines (assembly only). Your nanobots automatically repair worn machines near you using packs from your inventory. Unlocked by the new Machine Maintenance and Advanced Maintenance technologies.

• Maintenance Depot - New building that automatically repairs all machines in a large area around it, sending out a repair bot swarm that consumes packs from the depot's storage. Placing one shows its coverage area and which machines it will serve, the same view is available any time from a new overlay button in the top bar, and it alerts you when it runs out of packs. Uses a placeholder model for now.

• Maintenance Statistics - New Maintenance tab in the statistics panel: repair pack demand per biome under every weather state, your pack production capacity, and packs produced and consumed over time.

• Distant Horizon - The landscape now stays visible far beyond the normal render, showing simplified terrain, fluid and buildings all the way to the horizon. On by default at 4 km with minimal performance cost since it uses lightweight far-view meshes, and it can be reduced (1 or 2 km) or turned off in the graphics settings.

• Sandstorms & Blizzards - Windy and stormy weather now whips visible blowing sand across deserts and driven snow across frozen lands, replacing the old rolling fog banks, and dust devils wander the deserts in high winds. The Weather Fog setting turns these effects off too.

• Buildings on the Map - The world map now shows your buildings as colored footprints on top of the terrain, with a toggle button to hide the layer.

Improvements

• Better Rain - Rain now ripples across water and wet ground.

• Ambient Life - Small critters now show up around the world depending on biomes and other factors like time of day.

• Prettier Water - Calm shallow water is now clearer, letting you see the lake bed, with sunlight caustics. Seagrass now sways on shallow lake and river beds. Underwater visuals also look better.

• Falling Fluids - Free-falling fluid is now shown as distinct falling blocks, instead of stretched or flat sheets that could tear or poke through terrain.

• Flowing Fluids - Fluids now visibly stream downhill wherever the surface slopes.

• Prettier Skies - Clouds now look better with improved details replacing the old flat gray sheets.

• Better Lightning - Lightning bolts are now jagged branching strikes that flicker with repeated return strokes and light up the storm clouds and fog around them.

• Lightning Flashes Toggle - New accessibility option in the graphics settings that turns off lightning bolts and storm flashes entirely for anyone sensitive to flashing effects.

• Faster Map - The world map now fills in explored areas in seconds instead of minutes on exploration-heavy saves, and no longer dips the framerate while doing it.

• Tech Tree Cleanup - Storage I now requires Basic Electronics and Storage II requires Industrial Science, matching the science packs and materials they actually need.

• Heat Conduction Rework - Heat conductivity of Air was dropped to 50% from 100%. Heat transfer is now limited by how fast the receiving material absorbs it, and metals conduct heat better than open air. Encasing hot machinery in copper now cools it instead of trapping the heat.

• Calmer Heat Alerts - The heat throttling notification no longer pops in and out for machines hovering right at 100°C.

• Heat Destruction Grace Period - Buildings are no longer destroyed the instant they cross 300°C. They now survive up to 30 seconds of destructive heat, and the timer resets as soon as they cool back down.

• Research Sound - Completing a research now plays its own sound instead of the generic notification sound.

• Steadier Alerts - Alerts that resolve themselves (power shortage, heat throttling, and similar) now dim and linger for a minute instead of vanishing instantly, so a factory hovering right at a threshold no longer pops the same alert on and off.

• Seamless Sound - Game sounds no longer cut out when pausing or during the brief autosave freeze, the world keeps sounding while the game is paused.

• Autosave Heads-Up - A notification now warns you 5 seconds before an autosave begins.

• Flexible Drag Building - Drag placement can now start from a blocked spot, such as on top of an existing building. Blocked positions are simply skipped when you release, so you can anchor off a placed building and drag out a spaced row from there.

• Nighttime Lighting - Lights now cast a soft, even glow over a wide area at night instead of flaring to a harsh white when they get close to terrain or buildings.

• Player Light - Your bot's light now sits directly on you and lights your surroundings instantly, instead of tasking one of your nanobots to carry it around.

Balance Changes

• Repair Pack Chain Ratios - Copper Frame assembly time reduced from 8s to 4s and Copper Plate assembly time increased from 3s to 4s, so one assembler each for copper plates, copper gears, copper frames and Basic Repair Packs now runs a perfect-ratio pack line.

• Assembler MK 1 - Computing requirement reduced from 2 to 1.

• Boiler MK 1 - Reduced input and output rate of water from 3 to 1.5 to prevent them from overheating. You now need 2 Boilers per 1 Steam turbine MK1.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed overheated Computers still drawing full power while fully shut down. Their own waste heat kept them above the 200°C shutdown point forever, cooking them until they were destroyed. A fully overheated Computer now powers off and can cool back down.

• Fixed grass, plants and other ground details often not appearing on nearby terrain while flying around, only popping in once you stopped moving.

• Fixed volcano cores heating up without limit, reaching absurd temperatures over time. Lava sources now stop adding heat once the lava reaches natural magma temperature (around 1350°C).

• Fixed movement sometimes getting stuck while holding a movement key with a building panel open.

• Fixed boilers always showing around 5% in the status header even when running at full output.

• Fixed the world map showing unexplored fog over distant factory areas until you traveled back to them.

• Fixed grass and other thin plants turning nearly black right next to a light at night.

• Fixed the sky looking flat and cloudless when viewed from underwater. Clouds are now visible through the surface when you look up.