Checks and balances

Iterating the flow

For the next upcoming content patch we have spent a lot of development time on the estate management, economy and resource chains.

I have always envisioned a game where city building actually matters and is not just reduced to icons of buildings. Heavily inspired by some of my favorite games like Transport Tycoon (Delux), Satisfactory / Factorio and Sim city, i want the player to slowly build an estate that feels like their own, where placement and distance matter, with meaningful resource chains and a feeling of complexity and thus accomplishment when their estate runs like a well oiled machine.

In the short gif above (i hope that it renders properly) you can see an early version of the next update to estate management. This also builds on what i've written about earlier where we have completely removed the old tab-based UI in favor of in world, building / location based UI. The goal is that buildings feel real and impactful, not just a representation of the thing.

We are also integrating the world map and the estate map even further with caravans not just deliver resources from outside the estate on the world map. Once a caravan enters the estate, you can now see it travel on the estate canvas to the trade post and deliver their goods. Estate carts then pick them up for further processing.

Weights and book keeping

Another major part of the update is essentially about balance and flow.

To be honest many of the current system have evolved over time and, while they individually may have made sense, when integrated together the numbers made little sense.

Crafting is way to cheap, the supply / demand curve was some times non-existent, resource amounts for kontor voyages didn't accounted for 5 minutes of production for a 40 minute journey, armies only cared about wheat production so the optimal warfare state maximized farms in every slot. The list goes on and on.

Many hours have been spent creating and looking at spreadsheets for how resources flow, in what amounts and how changes in one part of the chain effects another system down stream.

Will the balance be perfect, certainly not, but hopefully it should feel more coherent going forward.

PTR

As part of our development timeline we would like to invite some of our veteran players and friends to try out and give feedback on some of these changes before we release it to the public. We are setting up a seperate private test realm that is invite only and were we can be a lot more careless about whipes and resets.

If you would like to help us out with testing, hit us up on info@apparatengames.com

End

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