Hey guys, last blog we talked about the job system and workers in general. So far we covered miners, movers and fireflies. In this blog we’ll cover the last 2 types of small workers remaining: acflies and drones.
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Full Swarmdustry update
Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.
Repeated intro
Hey guys, last blog we talked about the job system and workers in general. So far we covered miners, movers and fireflies. In this blog we’ll cover the last 2 types of small workers remaining: acflies and drones. I’ll also talk about the character you’re controlling and the backstory of the game.
What changed
0 fixes2 additions4 changes0 removals
Server
Gameplay
Balance
changedBack when I first started working on this game, I first implemented the energy system and fireflies. I found out that fireflies were filling the need to distribute energy around the swarm, and that boil chambers had enough of a buffer that energy storage wasn’t really necessary. But then came another kind of energy producer: breathing blobs. Infinite free energy at the cost of size and efficiency. Having a large farm of breathing blobs with only fireflies made it very hard to design any sort of medium or large base. You’d have to hook each blob to a spire so that it can become part of the network. Then you’d have the fireflies waste a lot of time just flying from blob to blob over big distances to charge up. So energy storage became a requirement.
changedSo what are acflies? Acflies are these cute flying, buzzing bugs that gather energy from energy producers and store it into accumulators . They are fast and agile so they can easily cover a lot more ground than fireflies could. Accumulators have a certain coverage area that acflies are bound to so they will only gather energy from within that area. Energy producers under the area don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) be part of the spire network, so fireflies will ignore them. If however, an accumulator is part of the network, then fireflies will prioritize charging there as opposed to other producers if auto worker distribution toggle is on. If it’s off, of course they can be controlled using worker bays. But the fact that fireflies can work at both accumulators and energy producers opens up the game to extra niche designs.
changedAlthough acflies were designed for breathing blobs, you can use them on any kind of energy producer to consolidate your network into a neat producer->storage->distributor design. Another fun fact about acflies is that, just like with drones, they only come in one flavor. So you won’t have to ever replace them to increase throughput like with movers or miners for example.
addedThere is no way around it, they follow almost the same mechanics as factorio’s construction bots. You got your personal robo- ahem, I mean, personal construction bay and your normal construction bay which can be placed in the world, and you also have a supply chest so that drones can use items to fill up ghosts or repair entities. However right now, these guys don’t use any energy. They are literally free to use. Eventually I do want to add some sort of mechanic that adds some kind of upkeep cost, but for now I’m still thinking. I don’t want them to just slow down if they’re out of energy and have to recharge at the conbay. I was thinking of introducing a sort of a big flying mothership kind of bug that could be used to charge them up… or something. If you have any ideas and would like to share, that’d be cool!
addedAfter years of brutal conflict with a relentless engineer, the Swarm was driven to the brink of extinction. Entire worlds were stripped bare, their native life replaced with cold, AI-driven machines. Only on a single planet did the Swarm endure, buried deep beneath the surface, where its roots first took hold. From the depths, the hive has birthed a new hope: a highly intelligent symbiote, capable of thinking not only as part of the Swarm, but also with the ingenuity of a human. Brought to the surface by the Undergound Survivors faction, this being has a singular purpose: build a living factory, harvest the planet’s obsidian, and awaken the Swarm’s full power. The time has come to rise again and reclaim what was taken.
changedAnyway, as I mentioned before, I don’t want the symbiote to become all powerful with all sorts of gadgets. I want the focus to be on the swarm. That being said, I did implement a tiny ‘equipable inventory system’. You can equip up to 5 modules: speed, crafting, cargo, hp, and personal conbay. All come in 3 different levels except the personal conbay which comes in 2. The speed modules will allow you to run faster, crafting modules increase crafting speed, cargo modules increase your inventory size and hp modules your hp. You can mix and match all of them. I implemented this mechanic because Swarmdustry doesn’t have any vehicles yet. And travelling long distances requires something better than walking, as well as cargo space. So for now this is sort of a cheap and quick solution, not very deep like factorio’s gadgets. But it is useful and I would say a mandatory quality of life improvement for medium to large bases.
Swarmdustry changes
changedBack when I first started working on this game, I first implemented the energy system and fireflies. I found out that fireflies were filling the need to distribute energy around the swarm, and that boil chambers had enough of a buffer that energy storage wasn’t really necessary. But then came another kind of energy producer: breathing blobs. Infinite free energy at the cost of size and efficiency. Having a large farm of breathing blobs with only fireflies made it very hard to design any sort of medium or large base. You’d have to hook each blob to a spire so that it can become part of the network. Then you’d have the fireflies waste a lot of time just flying from blob to blob over big distances to charge up. So energy storage became a requirement.
changedSo what are acflies? Acflies are these cute flying, buzzing bugs that gather energy from energy producers and store it into accumulators . They are fast and agile so they can easily cover a lot more ground than fireflies could. Accumulators have a certain coverage area that acflies are bound to so they will only gather energy from within that area. Energy producers under the area don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) be part of the spire network, so fireflies will ignore them. If however, an accumulator is part of the network, then fireflies will prioritize charging there as opposed to other producers if auto worker distribution toggle is on. If it’s off, of course they can be controlled using worker bays. But the fact that fireflies can work at both accumulators and energy producers opens up the game to extra niche designs.
changedAlthough acflies were designed for breathing blobs, you can use them on any kind of energy producer to consolidate your network into a neat producer->storage->distributor design. Another fun fact about acflies is that, just like with drones, they only come in one flavor. So you won’t have to ever replace them to increase throughput like with movers or miners for example.
addedThere is no way around it, they follow almost the same mechanics as factorio’s construction bots. You got your personal robo- ahem, I mean, personal construction bay and your normal construction bay which can be placed in the world, and you also have a supply chest so that drones can use items to fill up ghosts or repair entities. However right now, these guys don’t use any energy. They are literally free to use. Eventually I do want to add some sort of mechanic that adds some kind of upkeep cost, but for now I’m still thinking. I don’t want them to just slow down if they’re out of energy and have to recharge at the conbay. I was thinking of introducing a sort of a big flying mothership kind of bug that could be used to charge them up… or something. If you have any ideas and would like to share, that’d be cool!
addedAfter years of brutal conflict with a relentless engineer, the Swarm was driven to the brink of extinction. Entire worlds were stripped bare, their native life replaced with cold, AI-driven machines. Only on a single planet did the Swarm endure, buried deep beneath the surface, where its roots first took hold. From the depths, the hive has birthed a new hope: a highly intelligent symbiote, capable of thinking not only as part of the Swarm, but also with the ingenuity of a human. Brought to the surface by the Undergound Survivors faction, this being has a singular purpose: build a living factory, harvest the planet’s obsidian, and awaken the Swarm’s full power. The time has come to rise again and reclaim what was taken.
Back when I first started working on this game, I first implemented the energy system and fireflies. I found out that fireflies were filling the need to distribute energy around the swarm, and that boil chambers had enough of a buffer that energy storage wasn’t really necessary. But then came another kind of energy producer: breathing blobs. Infinite free energy at the cost of size and efficiency. Having a large farm of breathing blobs with only fireflies made it very hard to design any sort of medium or large base. You’d have to hook each blob to a spire so that it can become part of the network. Then you’d have the fireflies waste a lot of time just flying from blob to blob over big distances to charge up. So energy storage became a requirement.
I could’ve gone with a simple power storage design like other factory games, but this is the swarm. We gotta have bugs. Lots of bugs. Enter acflies and accumulators.
So what are acflies? Acflies are these cute flying, buzzing bugs that gather energy from energy producers and store it into accumulators. They are fast and agile so they can easily cover a lot more ground than fireflies could. Accumulators have a certain coverage area that acflies are bound to so they will only gather energy from within that area. Energy producers under the area don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) be part of the spire network, so fireflies will ignore them. If however, an accumulator is part of the network, then fireflies will prioritize charging there as opposed to other producers if auto worker distribution toggle is on. If it’s off, of course they can be controlled using worker bays. But the fact that fireflies can work at both accumulators and energy producers opens up the game to extra niche designs.
Although acflies were designed for breathing blobs, you can use them on any kind of energy producer to consolidate your network into a neat producer->storage->distributor design. Another fun fact about acflies is that, just like with drones, they only come in one flavor. So you won’t have to ever replace them to increase throughput like with movers or miners for example.
Now about drones. I say drones but I should say construction drones as these flying white tentacly balls are your answer to scaling up your hive and implementing your blueprints.
There is no way around it, they follow almost the same mechanics as factorio’s construction bots. You got your personal robo- ahem, I mean, personal construction bay and your normal construction bay which can be placed in the world, and you also have a supply chest so that drones can use items to fill up ghosts or repair entities. However right now, these guys don’t use any energy. They are literally free to use. Eventually I do want to add some sort of mechanic that adds some kind of upkeep cost, but for now I’m still thinking. I don’t want them to just slow down if they’re out of energy and have to recharge at the conbay. I was thinking of introducing a sort of a big flying mothership kind of bug that could be used to charge them up… or something. If you have any ideas and would like to share, that’d be cool!
Another reason why I didn’t want them to charge up is because that would mean the swarm symbiote (ah yes, I forgot to introduce the character you play as. Maybe I should’ve done that some blogs ago…) would also have to be able to produce energy. That means creating a whole inventory system and wearable items. The problem with this approach is that it clashes with the swarm design. I don’t want the player character to become a powerful entity like factorio’s engineer with all his gadgets. This is all about the swarm. It’s all about zerg rushing your enemies. It’s about quantity over quality. It’s about casualties being expected. And accepted.
So the swarm symbiote. The backstory of the game is still a thing in progress, but here’s what I got so far:
After years of brutal conflict with a relentless engineer, the Swarm was driven to the brink of extinction. Entire worlds were stripped bare, their native life replaced with cold, AI-driven machines. Only on a single planet did the Swarm endure, buried deep beneath the surface, where its roots first took hold. From the depths, the hive has birthed a new hope: a highly intelligent symbiote, capable of thinking not only as part of the Swarm, but also with the ingenuity of a human. Brought to the surface by the Undergound Survivors faction, this being has a singular purpose: build a living factory, harvest the planet’s obsidian, and awaken the Swarm’s full power. The time has come to rise again and reclaim what was taken.
Let me know what you guys think. I personally like it, but I’m still debating if I should mention the ‘relentless engineer’ part. It also leaves room to future mechanics like factions.
Anyway, as I mentioned before, I don’t want the symbiote to become all powerful with all sorts of gadgets. I want the focus to be on the swarm. That being said, I did implement a tiny ‘equipable inventory system’. You can equip up to 5 modules: speed, crafting, cargo, hp, and personal conbay. All come in 3 different levels except the personal conbay which comes in 2. The speed modules will allow you to run faster, crafting modules increase crafting speed, cargo modules increase your inventory size and hp modules your hp. You can mix and match all of them. I implemented this mechanic because Swarmdustry doesn’t have any vehicles yet. And travelling long distances requires something better than walking, as well as cargo space. So for now this is sort of a cheap and quick solution, not very deep like factorio’s gadgets. But it is useful and I would say a mandatory quality of life improvement for medium to large bases.
So that’s all for now. Next time I’ll talk probably about the transit system or maybe combat mechanics.
