Aven Prime is a science fiction game. Although we generally emphasize the fiction over the science, it's important to recognize that there is, in fact, real science behind Aven Prime.

Early in development, we reached out to Prof. Abel Méndez, Planetary Astrobiologist and Director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at UPR Arecibo, and peppered him with questions related to habitable extrasolar worlds.

Although we felt it best to leave most of the gritty scientific details out of the game (we broadly agree with Jeff Vogel that less text is usually better and in-game text not related to gameplay should be minimized), we thought it would be a good idea to gather the definitive answers to scientific questions here.


It's a moon around an alien gas giant. Probably the closest analogue is Pandora from the movie "Avatar": a moon around a gas giant with an atmosphere that isn't really breathable by humans.


10 light-years. All members of the Aven Expedition were frozen in cryostasis during the journey, which took much more than 10 years.

The Aven Expedition consists of roughly 10,000 colonists on a single massive colony ship. The colony ship drops down Prometheus Landers and a few inflatable modules onto various parts of the world in order to build a new human civilization.


Like Pandora from "Avatar" or Tattooine from "Star Wars," Aven Prime is a fictional planet -- It does not map to a specific known world. However, as we can see from the recently-discovered earthlike worlds in the TRAPPIST system, it's scientifically realistic.


Aven Prime's atmosphere is slightly thinner than earth's, and has more nitrogen and CO2 compared to earth, and 1/4 as much oxygen. So while it's not toxic to humans and does have oxygen, it's not really breathable and requires the colony to be hermetically sealed.

However, just as with Pandora from "Avatar," the atmosphere is quite friendly to plant life.




Time on Aven Prime is divided into sols. Each "sol" lasts roughly as long as 1 week on earth. It's essentially a "day."

The beginning of the sol is divided into "spring," "summer," and "fall" seasons, which are of course much shorter than seasons on Earth. The "winter" season is nighttime, and the only light is reflected from Aven Prime's gas giant.


Aven Prime has roughly 93% of earth's gravity.


Five centuries in the future. Humanity has already built small colonies on Mars, the moon, and several of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, in addition to various floating space colonies, and has finally developed the technology required to reach another star system.




No, Earth is fine. The Aven Expedition is in contact with Earth but communication takes 10 years since it's 10 light-years away (actually 20 years for a full back-and-forth dialogue).

There have been a few tumultuous events on Earth -- listen closely to an Earth History Center and you can hear about some of them! Many of the nations we know today no longer exist or have changed radically since the 21st century.

But Earth and the human civilization that thrive on it are both doing A-OK, and humanity's continued prosperity is what enabled the Aven Expedition.


The Aven Prime system offered the best combination of proximity to earth and multiple habitable worlds.




Just like Earth, Aven Prime has many different biomes (environments).

Similar to Mars, Aven Prime once had many seas and oceans which since receded and evaporated. Unlike Mars, though, Aven Prime had a great deal more water, and although it's generally a bit drier than Earth, much of that water still remains.

• The polar regions have "arctic" biomes broadly similar to the colder parts of Earth. This includes the Azara Falls and Tenari Glacier maps.
  
• The hot equatorial zones have "desert" biomes. This includes the game's Sandy Gulch, Arido Mesa, and Valley of Death maps.
  
• A handful of areas are "wetlands" similar to forested areas of Earth. These include the Vanaar, Hyla's Crescent, and Kelori Strand maps.
  
• Finally, a few of the ancient seabeds are full of crushed micro-crystals of azurite that give the terrain a distinctive blue tint. These exist in some of the very harshest corners of Aven Prime, and they include the Eden Crater map and the Cerulean Vale preorder map.

Just like Earth, Aven Prime exists in a world with a single type-G, yellow star.




The crystals are made from lightweight minerals that formed early in Aven Prime's development in wet subterranean caves. The lighter gravity combined with trapped bubbles of CO2 and nitrogen allowed them to grow to a larger size than even the largest crystals on earth.

Giant crystals do in fact exist on earth: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5pAzqmHBGI

The Aven Expedition is currently unaware of any particular use for these crystals; however, that may change in the future.


The soil of Aven Prime has most of the same basic chemicals as soil on Earth and similar pH levels in most areas (excluding "badlands" maps where only native crops grow). The soil does require fertilization with Earth bacteria and other microorganisms in order to be sufficiently friendly to Earth crops; however, all Farms and Greenhouses automatically perform this fertilization as needed.


Potash is not science fiction at all; it's a potassium-based fertilizer commonly used on Earth: http://www.pda.org.uk/what-is-potash/


All the "crop" types native to Aven Prime require chemical processing at a Mill or a Chemical Plant in order to be converted to food edible by humans. This modifies their chemistry at a fundamental level.

So while you can grow native crops much more quickly than earth crops, the native crops require special chemical processing that rice, quinoa, melons, etc do not.


Yes! There are several, in fact, and some of them are quite similar to Aven Prime. We hope to visit some of them in future sequels or expansions.




That question can only be answered by playing the game.


Thank you for being a part of the Aven Colony community. Have more science-related questions? Post them in the comments and we'll do our best to answer them!

Paul

Aven Prime is a science fiction game. Although we generally emphasize the fiction over the science, it's important to recognize that there is, in fact, real science behind Aven Prime.

Early in development, we reached out to Prof. Abel Méndez, Planetary Astrobiologist and Director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at UPR Arecibo, and peppered him with questions related to habitable extrasolar worlds.

Although we felt it best to leave most of the gritty scientific details out of the game (we broadly agree with Jeff Vogel that less text is usually better and in-game text not related to gameplay should be minimized), we thought it would be a good idea to gather the definitive answers to scientific questions here.


It's a moon around an alien gas giant. Probably the closest analogue is Pandora from the movie "Avatar": a moon around a gas giant with an atmosphere that isn't really breathable by humans.


10 light-years. All members of the Aven Expedition were frozen in cryostasis during the journey, which took much more than 10 years.

The Aven Expedition consists of roughly 10,000 colonists on a single massive colony ship. The colony ship drops down Prometheus Landers and a few inflatable modules onto various parts of the world in order to build a new human civilization.


Like Pandora from "Avatar" or Tattooine from "Star Wars," Aven Prime is a fictional planet -- It does not map to a specific known world. However, as we can see from the recently-discovered earthlike worlds in the TRAPPIST system, it's scientifically realistic.


Aven Prime's atmosphere is slightly thinner than earth's, and has more nitrogen and CO2 compared to earth, and 1/4 as much oxygen. So while it's not toxic to humans and does have oxygen, it's not really breathable and requires the colony to be hermetically sealed.

However, just as with Pandora from "Avatar," the atmosphere is quite friendly to plant life.




Time on Aven Prime is divided into sols. Each "sol" lasts roughly as long as 1 week on earth. It's essentially a "day."

The beginning of the sol is divided into "spring," "summer," and "fall" seasons, which are of course much shorter than seasons on Earth. The "winter" season is nighttime, and the only light is reflected from Aven Prime's gas giant.


Aven Prime has roughly 93% of earth's gravity.


Five centuries in the future. Humanity has already built small colonies on Mars, the moon, and several of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, in addition to various floating space colonies, and has finally developed the technology required to reach another star system.




No, Earth is fine. The Aven Expedition is in contact with Earth but communication takes 10 years since it's 10 light-years away (actually 20 years for a full back-and-forth dialogue).

There have been a few tumultuous events on Earth -- listen closely to an Earth History Center and you can hear about some of them! Many of the nations we know today no longer exist or have changed radically since the 21st century.

But Earth and the human civilization that thrive on it are both doing A-OK, and humanity's continued prosperity is what enabled the Aven Expedition.


The Aven Prime system offered the best combination of proximity to earth and multiple habitable worlds.




Just like Earth, Aven Prime has many different biomes (environments).

Similar to Mars, Aven Prime once had many seas and oceans which since receded and evaporated. Unlike Mars, though, Aven Prime had a great deal more water, and although it's generally a bit drier than Earth, much of that water still remains.

• The polar regions have "arctic" biomes broadly similar to the colder parts of Earth. This includes the Azara Falls and Tenari Glacier maps.
  
• The hot equatorial zones have "desert" biomes. This includes the game's Sandy Gulch, Arido Mesa, and Valley of Death maps.
  
• A handful of areas are "wetlands" similar to forested areas of Earth. These include the Vanaar, Hyla's Crescent, and Kelori Strand maps.
  
• Finally, a few of the ancient seabeds are full of crushed micro-crystals of azurite that give the terrain a distinctive blue tint. These exist in some of the very harshest corners of Aven Prime, and they include the Eden Crater map and the Cerulean Vale preorder map.

Just like Earth, Aven Prime exists in a world with a single type-G, yellow star.




The crystals are made from lightweight minerals that formed early in Aven Prime's development in wet subterranean caves. The lighter gravity combined with trapped bubbles of CO2 and nitrogen allowed them to grow to a larger size than even the largest crystals on earth.

Giant crystals do in fact exist on earth: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5pAzqmHBGI

The Aven Expedition is currently unaware of any particular use for these crystals; however, that may change in the future.


The soil of Aven Prime has most of the same basic chemicals as soil on Earth and similar pH levels in most areas (excluding "badlands" maps where only native crops grow). The soil does require fertilization with Earth bacteria and other microorganisms in order to be sufficiently friendly to Earth crops; however, all Farms and Greenhouses automatically perform this fertilization as needed.


Potash is not science fiction at all; it's a potassium-based fertilizer commonly used on Earth: http://www.pda.org.uk/what-is-potash/


All the "crop" types native to Aven Prime require chemical processing at a Mill or a Chemical Plant in order to be converted to food edible by humans. This modifies their chemistry at a fundamental level.

So while you can grow native crops much more quickly than earth crops, the native crops require special chemical processing that rice, quinoa, melons, etc do not.


Yes! There are several, in fact, and some of them are quite similar to Aven Prime. We hope to visit some of them in future sequels or expansions.




That question can only be answered by playing the game.


Thank you for being a part of the Aven Colony community. Have more science-related questions? Post them in the comments and we'll do our best to answer them!

Paul

Hi everyone!

The main beta branch on Steam was updated a few moments ago, and we'll be updating the "Demo" shortly, too, for those playing via the Alienware Indie Game Challenge or the PC Gamer demo key giveaway.

The major changes in the build include a couple of major optimizations, along with support for Razer Chroma keyboards and in-game key remapping, plus a fix for the bug with autosave files appearing multiple times in the load/save dialog.

However, we spent most of our time over the last few weeks working on a few top-secret new features! We're not ready to announce them quite yet, but keep your eyes peeled ... we'll be announcing some exciting additions to Aven Colony in the near future!

New features:

• You can now remap keys in-game! Previously, you could only change key bindings from the main menu
  
• Added a new key mapping "TogglePause" which will toggle between being paused and the speed before the pause was toggled (or 1x otherwise!). This will allow you to -- for example -- remap the pause key to the space bar so it will work Cities-Skylines-style.
  
• Added support for Razer Chroma keyboard lighting effects! https://www2.razerzone.com/chroma
  
• Added two new statistics to the Stats tab in the Colony Control Panel: "Housing % Filled" and "Colonists Fed & Hydrated"
  
• Added a new "Total" morale stat to the "Morale" category for the Stats tab -- this is exactly the same as the existing "Happiness" game data type but it's useful for viewing aggregate happiness in charts with other morale types
  
• Policy dialog: you can now click on the policies themselves to toggle them; you don't need to click the check box specifically

Art improvements and fixes:

• Lots of little UI improvements
  
• Re-painted the landscapes for most maps to properly accommodate the different placement of mineral deposits, geothermal vents, etc in both campaign and sandbox flavors
  
• Added a bit of grass to the green parts of arctic maps (Azara Falls and Tenari Glacier)
  
• Reduced bloom during Winter

Performance Improvements:

• Major improvements to performance when dragging buildings around the colony for placement
  
• Major improvements to performance in overlays
  
• Various optimizations to police, construction, and decontamination drones

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue with the auto-save appearing too many times in the load/save dialogs
  
• Fixed an issue with Veronika's voice-over not properly un-ducking and returning the music to its proper volume in some cases in the main menu
  
• Fixed issues where placing a building that was currently being rotated could end up with a building with a really weird rotation

Thank you for being a part of the Aven Colony community!

Hi everyone!

The main beta branch on Steam was updated a few moments ago, and we'll be updating the "Demo" shortly, too, for those playing via the Alienware Indie Game Challenge or the PC Gamer demo key giveaway.

The major changes in the build include a couple of major optimizations, along with support for Razer Chroma keyboards and in-game key remapping, plus a fix for the bug with autosave files appearing multiple times in the load/save dialog.

However, we spent most of our time over the last few weeks working on a few top-secret new features! We're not ready to announce them quite yet, but keep your eyes peeled ... we'll be announcing some exciting additions to Aven Colony in the near future!

New features:

• You can now remap keys in-game! Previously, you could only change key bindings from the main menu
  
• Added a new key mapping "TogglePause" which will toggle between being paused and the speed before the pause was toggled (or 1x otherwise!). This will allow you to -- for example -- remap the pause key to the space bar so it will work Cities-Skylines-style.
  
• Added support for Razer Chroma keyboard lighting effects! https://www2.razerzone.com/chroma
  
• Added two new statistics to the Stats tab in the Colony Control Panel: "Housing % Filled" and "Colonists Fed & Hydrated"
  
• Added a new "Total" morale stat to the "Morale" category for the Stats tab -- this is exactly the same as the existing "Happiness" game data type but it's useful for viewing aggregate happiness in charts with other morale types
  
• Policy dialog: you can now click on the policies themselves to toggle them; you don't need to click the check box specifically

Art improvements and fixes:

• Lots of little UI improvements
  
• Re-painted the landscapes for most maps to properly accommodate the different placement of mineral deposits, geothermal vents, etc in both campaign and sandbox flavors
  
• Added a bit of grass to the green parts of arctic maps (Azara Falls and Tenari Glacier)
  
• Reduced bloom during Winter

Performance Improvements:

• Major improvements to performance when dragging buildings around the colony for placement
  
• Major improvements to performance in overlays
  
• Various optimizations to police, construction, and decontamination drones

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an issue with the auto-save appearing too many times in the load/save dialogs
  
• Fixed an issue with Veronika's voice-over not properly un-ducking and returning the music to its proper volume in some cases in the main menu
  
• Fixed issues where placing a building that was currently being rotated could end up with a building with a really weird rotation

Thank you for being a part of the Aven Colony community!

We've just received word from NVIDIA that Ansel now supports Aven Colony 360-degree screenshots!

Here are the instructions:

1. If you're using an NVIDIA video card, make sure you have the very latest NVIDIA drivers installed, and that Aven Colony is up-to-date. If you don't have an NVIDIA video card, you'll need one to use Ansel.
   
2. Run NvCameraConfiguration.exe. For example, this is likely to be in "C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Ansel\Tools"
   
3. Once NvCameraConfiguration.exe is running, make sure that NvCamera is enabled. You can choose your own Hotkey which you will use in the game to activate Ansel. The default is Alt+F2, but we recommend remapping this as Aven Colony uses the F2 key by default (I map to Ctrl-F11, right next to the Steam screenshot key, F12). It's helpful to configure the Snapshots Directory - that is where the Ansel screenshots will be saved!
   
4. Run Aven Colony and use the hotkey that you defined earlier and the Ansel UI will appear. You can use WSAD plus holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse to get the camera to the perfect location.
   
5. Set the "Capture type" to be 360 degrees and choose the resolution of the screenshot. The final size will be much smaller than 1.0GB, but you do need at least that much free space while the screenshot is being taken.
   Once you're happy, click "Snap." Note that Ansel may take 30 seconds or more to generate the shot.
   
6. To view the screenshot, you can upload the image to Google Photos or to Facebook. We've found that both automatically detect that it's an Ansel screenshot and will let the viewer move the camera around the 3D scene!

If you take Ansel screenshots, be sure to tag us at @AvenColony and @MothershipTeam on Twitter and / or Facebook so we can retweet your shots!

Here are some of our prior Ansel screenshots (posted on Facebook, which has built-in panoramic screenshot support):

Hyla's Crescent - birds

Hyla's Crescent - Plasma Turrets and shard storm

Sandy Gulch

Tenari Glacier - small colony with protesters

Tenari Glacier - large colony

Eden Crater

We've just received word from NVIDIA that Ansel now supports Aven Colony 360-degree screenshots!

Here are the instructions:

1. If you're using an NVIDIA video card, make sure you have the very latest NVIDIA drivers installed, and that Aven Colony is up-to-date. If you don't have an NVIDIA video card, you'll need one to use Ansel.
   
2. Run NvCameraConfiguration.exe. For example, this is likely to be in "C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Ansel\Tools"
   
3. Once NvCameraConfiguration.exe is running, make sure that NvCamera is enabled. You can choose your own Hotkey which you will use in the game to activate Ansel. The default is Alt+F2, but we recommend remapping this as Aven Colony uses the F2 key by default (I map to Ctrl-F11, right next to the Steam screenshot key, F12). It's helpful to configure the Snapshots Directory - that is where the Ansel screenshots will be saved!
   
4. Run Aven Colony and use the hotkey that you defined earlier and the Ansel UI will appear. You can use WSAD plus holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse to get the camera to the perfect location.
   
5. Set the "Capture type" to be 360 degrees and choose the resolution of the screenshot. The final size will be much smaller than 1.0GB, but you do need at least that much free space while the screenshot is being taken.
   Once you're happy, click "Snap." Note that Ansel may take 30 seconds or more to generate the shot.
   
6. To view the screenshot, you can upload the image to Google Photos or to Facebook. We've found that both automatically detect that it's an Ansel screenshot and will let the viewer move the camera around the 3D scene!

If you take Ansel screenshots, be sure to tag us at @AvenColony and @MothershipTeam on Twitter and / or Facebook so we can retweet your shots!

Here are some of our prior Ansel screenshots (posted on Facebook, which has built-in panoramic screenshot support):

Hyla's Crescent - birds

Hyla's Crescent - Plasma Turrets and shard storm

Sandy Gulch

Tenari Glacier - small colony with protesters

Tenari Glacier - large colony

Eden Crater

What’s more, you can pre-order right now to receive 10% off and access to bonus sandbox map Cerulean Vale – a treacherous ancient seabed. Barren and hostile, do you have what it takes to survive this crystalline wasteland?

Just in case you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, Aven Colony is a sci-fi city builder from Texan developers Mothership Entertainment. You are given the not so simple task of building, exploring and protecting your colony to ensure the survival of the human race on alien planet Aven Prime. Nurture settlements in vast wetlands, snowy tundra and perilous deserts and create a safe haven for humans on Aven Prime.

With a dedicated campaign and story, plus an expansive sandbox mode, there’s plenty of opportunity to delve into Aven Prime’s mysterious past or just grow accustomed to the locals.

You can pre-order Aven Colony now to receive 10% off and access to bonus sandbox map Cerulean Vale!

Good luck Governors!

What’s more, you can pre-order right now to receive 10% off and access to bonus sandbox map Cerulean Vale – a treacherous ancient seabed. Barren and hostile, do you have what it takes to survive this crystalline wasteland?

Just in case you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, Aven Colony is a sci-fi city builder from Texan developers Mothership Entertainment. You are given the not so simple task of building, exploring and protecting your colony to ensure the survival of the human race on alien planet Aven Prime. Nurture settlements in vast wetlands, snowy tundra and perilous deserts and create a safe haven for humans on Aven Prime.

With a dedicated campaign and story, plus an expansive sandbox mode, there’s plenty of opportunity to delve into Aven Prime’s mysterious past or just grow accustomed to the locals.

You can pre-order Aven Colony now to receive 10% off and access to bonus sandbox map Cerulean Vale!

Good luck Governors!

Hi everyone,

The main beta branch on Steam was updated last night -- apologies for the delay in getting the build notes out.

We also updated the demo moments ago. Please note that those of you playing the separate "demo" app on Steam (via the Alienware Indie Game Challenge distribution from a few weeks ago) should now have full access to the expedition system in the Arido Mesa sandbox map!

New features:

• You can now "dock" charts from the Statistics tab onscreen while you play, as announced here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543810926317367
  
• You can now "scrub" the charts in the Statistics pane by hovering the mouse over them to see the previous historical values of the selected data, as announced here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543429191110582
  
• Added support for "Competition Mode" -- pass in CompetitionMode=1 as a command line param: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543429194952659
  
• Please note that all of the above features are PC-only features and should not be expected in the console versions of Aven Colony
  
• The small Holo-Bot that projects protest holograms will now enter and exit smoothly using the same elevator the protesters use
  
• When you turn on the Martial Law social policy, all holo-bots now face toward the protests and project a hologram that says "DISPERSE"
  
• When you decommission a building, the progress bar now goes DOWN properly and shows the correct percentage value

Art improvements and fixes:

• Lots of small updates to many building textures to improve visual continuity/conformity
  
• Improved the look of the data items in the Stats pane

Tuning / balancing / minor changes:

• Improved drone movement when building Skyscrapers
  
• Increased the amount of time before the colony automatically switches out of Energy Battery mode
  
• Significantly improved the scoring algorithm ("Score" in the Statistics tab of the colony control panel)
  
• Updated banners for the Holo-Sims in the campaign mission list

Performance Improvements:

• Improved load times
  
• Turned off unnecessary shadow-casting for objects that didn't need it
  
• Improved frame rate in the expedition UI
  
• Fixed various instancing issues that hampered performance slightly and caused rare graphical glitches
  
• Plasma turret shots are now ~12% faster; this helps them hit creep spores and plague spores moving perpendicularly
  
• Fixed an issue where toxic gas emissions would drain performance slightly even after they disappeared

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug where construction drones could get stuck hanging in space if their C-Drone Hub lost power while you'd also requested an upgrade and they were doing something else at the time
  
• Fixed bug where Wind Turbines weren't pushing away toxic gas if the camera was facing away from them
  
• Improved some issues with incorrectly blocked tiles in Tenari Glacier
  
• Fixes to some very rare cases where the camera could get stuck inside a Skyscraper
  
• Buildings that can't be sold (such as the Expedition Center) can still have their construction cancelled properly
  
• Fixed issue where recycling a 3x3 (or larger) building that was under construction could result in a building at a random position in the map
  
• Overlay tiles are no longer visible in the valley in Tenari Glacier
  
• The 'Drones' overlay no longer renders in blocked tiles; this prevents huge bars from being visible inside the holes in Sandy Gulch and other desert maps when in the Drones overlay
  
• Fixed the water rate-of-change indicator to work properly at game startup
  
• Fixed Refraction on drone station Force Fields
  
• Farms now stay properly selected when upgrading them
  
• Fixed bug where if a farm/greenhouse was selected when construction completed, there would be no visible borders in the crops overlay mode that would appear
  
• Fixed a small black sphere being visible on some maps
  
• Fixed the game speed splash not fading out
  
• Fixed issue where volume settings weren't restored properly in the main menu
  
• Fixed some issues where you could build inside some of the mesas in Arido Mesa
  
• Fixed some rare bugs with the camera rotating too much when returning to the colony on some maps
  
• Fixed bug with Energy Batteries refusing to allow you to build the next-higher tier after you'd already built the previous tier but not connected it to the power grid
  
• Expedition system: fixed a bug where "Stockpile" and "Supply Drop" POIs would sometimes be impossible to complete

Also, the NVIDIA Ansel support (for 360-degree panoramic screenshots) has pretty much been implemented but we've heard from NVIDIA that whitelisting our app will take a bit longer than expected. We'll post here once Aven Colony gets whitelisted, which is necessary for Ansel to work.

Hi everyone,

The main beta branch on Steam was updated last night -- apologies for the delay in getting the build notes out.

We also updated the demo moments ago. Please note that those of you playing the separate "demo" app on Steam (via the Alienware Indie Game Challenge distribution from a few weeks ago) should now have full access to the expedition system in the Arido Mesa sandbox map!

New features:

• You can now "dock" charts from the Statistics tab onscreen while you play, as announced here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543810926317367
  
• You can now "scrub" the charts in the Statistics pane by hovering the mouse over them to see the previous historical values of the selected data, as announced here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543429191110582
  
• Added support for "Competition Mode" -- pass in CompetitionMode=1 as a command line param: http://steamcommunity.com/games/484900/announcements/detail/1262543429194952659
  
• Please note that all of the above features are PC-only features and should not be expected in the console versions of Aven Colony
  
• The small Holo-Bot that projects protest holograms will now enter and exit smoothly using the same elevator the protesters use
  
• When you turn on the Martial Law social policy, all holo-bots now face toward the protests and project a hologram that says "DISPERSE"
  
• When you decommission a building, the progress bar now goes DOWN properly and shows the correct percentage value

Art improvements and fixes:

• Lots of small updates to many building textures to improve visual continuity/conformity
  
• Improved the look of the data items in the Stats pane

Tuning / balancing / minor changes:

• Improved drone movement when building Skyscrapers
  
• Increased the amount of time before the colony automatically switches out of Energy Battery mode
  
• Significantly improved the scoring algorithm ("Score" in the Statistics tab of the colony control panel)
  
• Updated banners for the Holo-Sims in the campaign mission list

Performance Improvements:

• Improved load times
  
• Turned off unnecessary shadow-casting for objects that didn't need it
  
• Improved frame rate in the expedition UI
  
• Fixed various instancing issues that hampered performance slightly and caused rare graphical glitches
  
• Plasma turret shots are now ~12% faster; this helps them hit creep spores and plague spores moving perpendicularly
  
• Fixed an issue where toxic gas emissions would drain performance slightly even after they disappeared

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a bug where construction drones could get stuck hanging in space if their C-Drone Hub lost power while you'd also requested an upgrade and they were doing something else at the time
  
• Fixed bug where Wind Turbines weren't pushing away toxic gas if the camera was facing away from them
  
• Improved some issues with incorrectly blocked tiles in Tenari Glacier
  
• Fixes to some very rare cases where the camera could get stuck inside a Skyscraper
  
• Buildings that can't be sold (such as the Expedition Center) can still have their construction cancelled properly
  
• Fixed issue where recycling a 3x3 (or larger) building that was under construction could result in a building at a random position in the map
  
• Overlay tiles are no longer visible in the valley in Tenari Glacier
  
• The 'Drones' overlay no longer renders in blocked tiles; this prevents huge bars from being visible inside the holes in Sandy Gulch and other desert maps when in the Drones overlay
  
• Fixed the water rate-of-change indicator to work properly at game startup
  
• Fixed Refraction on drone station Force Fields
  
• Farms now stay properly selected when upgrading them
  
• Fixed bug where if a farm/greenhouse was selected when construction completed, there would be no visible borders in the crops overlay mode that would appear
  
• Fixed a small black sphere being visible on some maps
  
• Fixed the game speed splash not fading out
  
• Fixed issue where volume settings weren't restored properly in the main menu
  
• Fixed some issues where you could build inside some of the mesas in Arido Mesa
  
• Fixed some rare bugs with the camera rotating too much when returning to the colony on some maps
  
• Fixed bug with Energy Batteries refusing to allow you to build the next-higher tier after you'd already built the previous tier but not connected it to the power grid
  
• Expedition system: fixed a bug where "Stockpile" and "Supply Drop" POIs would sometimes be impossible to complete

Also, the NVIDIA Ansel support (for 360-degree panoramic screenshots) has pretty much been implemented but we've heard from NVIDIA that whitelisting our app will take a bit longer than expected. We'll post here once Aven Colony gets whitelisted, which is necessary for Ansel to work.