What's New in 1.4

Dear miners,

Update 1.4 is finally here, and it's a big one. We've spent the past weeks hammering on this update, and we are genuinely thrilled to put it in your hands.

We heard you loud and clear: prestige didn't feel rewarding enough. Starting with your very first prestige, you now unlock a stack of brand-new features: rocket launches, asteroid mining, new resources, new crafts, a new furnace, a tech research system, and a full automation system. There is a lot of new ground to dig through.

Background mines also got a deep performance overhaul. Every shaft now ticks on the same C++ simulation as your active mine, so the game stays smooth even with a roster of asteroid mines running in parallel.

This patch touches a lot of systems, so it is very possible that a few bugs slipped through our testing. If you hit anything weird, please send a report straight from the in-game feedback form, or post on the Steam community forum. We read every single one and fixes go out fast.

Thanks for digging with us. Now go build a rocket.

LAUNCH PAD + ORBIT MAP

• Build a rocket out of three MK-tiered parts (Engine, Fuel Tank, Payload Bay), top off propellant, load cargo and send it to space.

• New orbit map view: probes scan one band at a time to reveal asteroid + comet locations.

• Drill missions land on revealed targets and become full mines with their own terrain (asteroid stone, iridium ore, cobalt ore, hydrogen ice).

• New endgame furnace: the Nanofabricator. Crafts logic_circuit (the automation currency) and astrium (the rocket-MK alloy).

RESEARCH LAB

• Two-tab research panel: Aerospace and Industrial & Auto.

• Aerospace nodes upgrade rocket parts to MK II, MK III, MK IV. Engine thrust, tank capacity and bay capacity scale per level. Cost in astrium.

• Industrial & Auto nodes unlock automation actions and conditions. Cost in logic_circuit. Queueable, no fixed hierarchy.

AUTOMATION

• New Automation panel: assemble routines from action and condition nodes unlocked through the lab. 1 Hz tick walks the routine list and runs every routine whose condition fires.

• Routines persist across prestige.

• Save / Load named presets, plus an export-as-share-code path so routines can be passed between saves or to other players.

• Walks every shaft, planet AND orbit. Automation on background asteroid mines is fully supported.

• Right-side log column streams every successful auto event live. Cap 100 lines, smart scroll only follows when the player is at the bottom.

PERFORMANCE & STABILITY

• Background mines now run on the same C++ simulation path as the active mine. Every shaft ticks exact block damage, drops and depth.

• Threaded worker pool ticks all shafts in parallel.

• Save format stays compatible with 1.3 saves.

BALANCING

• AddedWorld map rebalancedcopper, tin and coal biomes are much more common across every ring, so mid-game is no longer starved of basic ingot inputs. Existing saves keep their generated map; new saves and prestige re-rolls see the new distribution.

• Tin Deposits and Iron Veins biome colours retuned for legibility.

• Auto-Clicker cost multiplier 1.10 to 1.08 per level.

• Impact Spread reworked: was a one-time buy adding "+1 adjacent block hit", now a 10-level upgrade granting +10% click damage to adjacent blocks per level (cost x1.5 per level).

BUG FIXES

• Discovery popup no longer claims a recipe is "unlocked" before the player owns a furnace able to craft it.

• Save name dialog highlight readable again, selection colour switched to dark amber.

• Autosave is now per-slot. Starting a new game (or playing on another save) no longer overwrites the autosave of an unrelated save. The legacy single autosave.json is migrated to its source slot on first launch.

• Save / load: defensive validation on a handful of fields some 1.3 saves left in malformed states.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Mass buy on every repeatable upgrade. Shift-click buys the highest amount you can afford, click-and-hold fills a bar and fires a buy_max when you release. Works on pickaxe upgrades, machine upgrades, furnaces, propellant fills, and rocket-MK research.

• Upgrade and machine cards now show a small resource icon next to the amount instead of a plain "coal 15" text line. Easier to parse at a glance.

Feedback welcome!