Howdy Folks!

I’m super excited to announce that the Energized update is now live! This update focuses primarily on surface content with the addition of new visuals, power generation and more. This update also includes various tweaks, balances and bug fixes. A huge thank you to everyone who provided feedback during the Experimental and Test Build versions.

This update took longer than originally planned as updating the planet map visuals was rather time intensive. Moving forward from this update I’ll be focusing on some smaller updates to keep the content flowing. For now, though, let’s take a look at what is included in the Energized update!

Planet Map Visuals

The planet map artwork has been completely overhauled with new visuals for terrain, oceans, rivers, shore lines and flora. The most noticeable change is that the terrain has visual elevation and better blending between tiles. The planet map data has not changed so loading up and existing save file will show the planet map with these new visuals.

Planet Map Power

New power generation and distribution structures can now be researched and constructed. This also means that some surface side buildings now require power to function. Power can flow between your underground facility and the surface by connecting surface side power generators to the primary facility.

Misc

Three new original music tracks have been added to provide more variation. There have been various tweaks and changes under the hood including updating to Unity Engine version 2019 and migrating to .net 4.x.

The discovery and guide section formatting has been updated to look a bit better and provide better consistency between sections.

There is a lot of additional tweaks, changes and fixes so be sure to check out the release notes below for the complete list.

Thank you all for the amazing support!

Follow Mercury Fallen Development On

Twitter | Facebook | Website | Discord | Roadmap

Release Notes

Planet Map Visuals

• Updated look of terrain
• Updated look of water and shorelines
• Updated look of rivers
• River biome now reduces movement speed
• Updated or replaced most biome tile textures
• Updated or replaced biome detail artwork(flora)
• Added new biome detail artwork
• Added depth of field post processing effect
• Tweaked existing post processing effects
• Updated look of display modes
• Unexplored tiles now have a new look
• Mountains no longer have visual height if unexplored
• Elevation info refactored to better match new visual tile height
• Tile depth info now has a different icon than elevation
• Can now zoom in/out using camera zoom keyboard shortcuts
• Vehicles will now take shorter paths through planet tiles where applicable
• Optimized planet surface camera calculations. This should result in some improved performance.

Planet Map Structures

• Added Wind Turbines
• Added Solar Panel
• Added Power Poles
• Added Surface Power research

UI Tweaks

• Updated header of discovery section content
• Updated header of guide section content
• Updated formatting for guide section content
• Updated several entries in guide section

Balancing

• Reduced build cost of vehicle bay
• Standing Lamp and Wall Light power consumption reduced from 5 to 4
• Night Stand power consumption reduced from 5 to 2
• Improved Power Supply equipment bonus changed from 10% to 20% and recipe ingredients increased slightly
• Advanced Power Supply equipment bonus changed from 25% to 40% and recipe ingredients increased slightly

Colonist Pathfinding

• Added penalties to facility tiles to improve path finding
• Colonists will now prefer to walk over hallway tiles when generating a path
• Colonists are less likely to generate a path that goes through a door if applicable
• Fixed: Colonist planning next mining target before current mining target tile has become walkable. This resulted in colonists either wandering aimlessly or bouncing between mining targets when attempting to ming a 1 tile wide tunnel.

Misc

• Added 3 new original music tracks
• Added guide section for surface power
• Selecting a room floor a second time will select the underlying floor tile
• Migrated Unity Engine to version 2019.4
• Migrated to .net 4.x.

Modding

• Added spawn_closet_match tag to GDPOI. When the POI is spawned it will attempt to spawn it at the closest matching tile from the facility.
• Added spawn_natural tag to GDPOI. If false the POI will not automatically be spawned on the map. This allows for POIs to be spawned from stories and missions.
• Updated various language strings including guide data to use CData tags
• Language data gstr tags can now use CData tags to avoid having to escape formatting tags

Fixes

• Fixed: Mining Platform light appearing in underground facility
• Fixed: Robot not showing power hover icon when low or out of power
• Fixed: Removing a pinned item/category causes pinned items to stop working in some instances
• Fixed: Colonists can walk through Dirt/Ore wall tiles if that tile contains an item chest
• Fixed: Sea Turtle vehicle has wrong icon/description when selected
• Fixed: Toggle audio playing multiple times when opening craft queue recipe list
• Fixed: Machines showing as receiving/having power even when they are not, in some instances
• Fixed: POI locations showing enable/disable button
• Fixed: Surface resources at deeper depths showing after loading a save game without having previously uncovered them via scanning.
• Fixed: Non-expedition vehicles showing cancel expedition button in info panel
• Fixed: Opened starting capsule spawning inside another stasis capsule on some seeds
• Fixed: Unable to create expedition without setting destinations in create expedition window in some instances
• Fixed: Info window for selecting expedition targets appears when selected an expedition that is already enroute in some instances
• Fixed: Expeditions don’t automatically travel to destinations selected during expedition creation when expedition is ready
• Fixed: Expeditions don’t continue towards destinations after loading a save game
• Fixed: Colonists flagged as being on an expedition that doesn’t exist after loading a save game in some instances
• Fixed: Colonists only refueling one generator at a time even if there are multiple haulers
• Fixed: Colonists not refueling generators at all in some instances