- Fixed bug: Wood and Stone pillars were not buildable at the base of steep cliffs
- Capped Pipe Animation speed so it would not appear backwards in cases of low framerate
- Fixed bug: Copying and pasting compute block attributes onto another compute block would not always update the block’s icon
- Fixed bug: Train cars would potentially load their item filters out-of-order, resulting in train engine's filter being ignored and accepting invalid goods
- Fixed bug: Game would fail to update many world objects if there was a pipe connector without a pipe path
- Carrot and Potatoes use Mesh Instancing for better performance

- Fixed bug: Airship navigation was sometimes unreliable if cursor hovered over belts, chutes, etc. when targeting its path
- Fixed bug: Pipe connectors in the middle of vertical pipes were not treated as contiguous, and as such would hold items by default instead of bypassing
- Fixed Mana Crystals being output at Input-only connectors, causing pipe blockage
- Changed logic for when pipe items can jump from a building’s input connector to a non-contiguous outlet: Depleted Crystals can jump between Mana Connectors. If the connector is not a “Power” inlet, is set to Bypass AND it has no other pipe outlets, items can jump. This should prevent unwanted inputs from clogging up output pipes.

Airships are a new worker unit that allow for flexible point-to-point delivery of goods over long distances. They have a large capacity (4 filterable slots of 25 items each), can travel through the sky above obstacles, and can pick up and drop off at any building with clearance above it. It will be very useful when you need to make a large one-off delivery, or need to move a set of goods over a crowded area.

This is obviously very powerful, so there are some key restrictions to make sure it doesn't make everything else in the game obsolete.

For one, they move pretty slowly - about 2 blocks per second. They also require 4 population capacity, so it will not be viable to spam them. They are only only available late-game (Airship research becomes available once Air Mana Purification research has been completed). And, when transferring items to and from buildings, they unload slowly (2 items / second).

However, there are ways to improve this performance. For one, there is a new Airship Dock storage building that holds 400 items, and can transfer 25 items a second between Airships. So for high throughput routes, you will probably want to use those at your endpoints. Another is below...



The Air Shrine has finally been introduced! When charged with Air Crystals, the Air Shrine will apply a 'Boosted' status effect to all population-based worker units that walk within a few blocks which doubles their movement and harvesting speed. It also reaches into the sky above it, so if you put an Air Shrine along an Airship route you will get much better results!

The Mana system has been overly complicated for a long time, frequently blocking players from progressing further in the game. So some big changes have been made to it.

There's a lot of details, but the tl;dr is that Mana Transmitters and Mana Receivers are no longer necessary. Instead of Mana Power, you can pipe Mana Crystals directly into and out of buildings, or deliver them with belts or workers. And, all your old pipe networks will be totally compatible with the new system. See below:



Here's the full changes to the Mana system:

• Crystals can move through mana pipes without needing to be converted to & from a power format (what Transmitters and Receivers used to do).
  
• Recipes that previously consumed Mana Power will instead consume physical Crystals and produce Depleted Crystals as a byproduct. You will still need to remove these from the building, or else production will be blocked. However this can be done with pipes or with other physical means like conveyor belts or workers.
  
• Since many buildings will now output Depleted Crystals as a byproduct, an ‘Exclude Crystal’ filter will automatically be applied to any Grabbers or Omniconnectors in legacy maps that don’t otherwise have a filter, and will be applied by default to any new Grabbers or Omniconnectors that are created when dragging new pipe or belt paths to buildings that produce these byproducts.
  
• Transmitters and Receivers will simply function as a building that provides a convenient optional interface to the mana pipe network. So that means existing Transmitters and Receivers can remain in place without having any negative effects.
  
• Receivers now accept Charged or Depleted crystals. The building has 4 storage slots holding up to 20 items each, and a top-level item filter.
  
• You will still need to use Rechargers to convert Depleted Crystals back to a default Charged state.
  
• Mana boosters are a bit different. They still exist, but instead of slowly draining the Crystal they will simply accept or reject it if the crystal’s energy can be fully consumed. When this occurs the Crystal becomes Depleted and will proceed down the mana pipe, not stored in the building. Crystals used to power Boosters will only leave the building via Mana Pipe.
  
• Crystals arriving via Pipes will attempt to load into inventory, and if that is full, will attempt to charge a Booster value. Crystals arriving via any other means (wagons, conveyor belt, etc) will not be used to power Boosters.
  
• You can force a Mana Connector pipe to only supply Booster Power by changing its Access Type to the new value: “Power In”.
  
• Also as a result of mana rework, the amount of Crystals consumed and converted to Depleted will change up or down, depending on recipe.

All these changes are meant to make the Mana system more consistent with how the rest of the game works, and hopefully is much easier to use.



There's a new "Overflow Behavior" parameter on all pipe connectors. This setting determines what happens if the connected building is full or otherwise unable to accept the pipe item. There are three settings:

• Hold: The pipe item will stay at the connector until there is room in the building, blocking anything behind it.
  
• Bypass: The pipe item will continue moving down the pipe unchanged.
  
• Default: This is meant to mimic legacy pipe behavior so that existing maps don't get affected. Its effect depends on the connector setup: Mana Connectors default to ‘Hold’ behavior, unless the item is a Depleted Crystal, which will bypass. Other pipe items (Steam, Water, and Omni) default to ‘Bypass’, unless the pipe is non-contiguous, where it will default to Hold.

Additional Changes:

• Fixed bug: Goods Supply Panel (shown when inspecting Markets) would display the wrong list of available goods when switching between maps with different rule sets
  
• Fixed bug: non-rail units would attempt to lock to rail tile directions during placement
  
• In Creative mode, all building recipes, upgrades and research are visible and available (previously were locked based on research state)
  
• Fixed bug: ‘Speed: 100%’ was being shown on the building selection panel for buildings that don’t have any speed modifiers (Markets, Trading Posts, Shrines)
  
• Fixed bug: Boxcar icon was wrong color
  
• Cursor no longer reverts back to selection mode after placing a Temple
  
• Fixed bug: Earth Shrines were not showing Area-of-effect on build or select
  
• Fixed bug: Train would sometimes fail to load or unload if the Locomotive stopped in a location overlapping two different Train Stops
  
• Fixed bug: blank Hotbar items would appear red / invalid on Hotbar reload
  
• Fixed bug: possible unexpected behavior when copying an object without a filter onto an object with a filter
  
• Fixed bug: Campaign Maps 1-4 had the ‘Restrict Minecart Inventory’ rule set to Off instead of On (fix doesn’t affect maps in progress)
  
• Fixed bug: Newly-placed sign posts would not show their messages on data overlay panel (F)
  
• Fixed bug: Updating Sign Post Labels and Signal Tags would not immediately update the new value on the selected item panel
  
• Fixed bug: Research would jump ahead to a nearly complete state if its count was > 100 (Is a factor when research cost multiplier is > 1)
  
• Fixed bug: Deactivating a Train Stop would not allow a parked train to continue moving
  
• Fixed bug: A train would remain at a station attempting to transfer items in small amounts if station was slowly emptying at the same time

• Mana Pipe recipe outputs 4 mana pipes instead of 1.
  
• Magic Conveyor Belt requires 20 fuel instead of 10
  
• Magic Rail Tile requires 20 fuel instead of 10
  
• Mana Brick requires 12 fuel instead of 6
  
• Mana Crystal requires 10 fuel instead of 4
  
• Modified several Trading Post recipes to make them more advantageous
  
• Increased speed of Train Stop loading and unloading from 1 second / load to .5 seconds / load
  
• Increased Yellow Coin cost of Boxcar, Tank Car, and Hopper from 100 coins to 500
  
• All Mana Stone mine production recipes produce 4X output. All recipes consuming Mana Stone require 4x amount as input. (Increases throughput requirement without affecting balance)
  
• All Ether production recipes produce 2X output. All recipes consuming Ether require 2X amount as input. (Again, increases throughput requirement without affecting balance)
  
• Terrain Purchase starts at 500 yellow coins instead of 1000, and cost increases much slower with each subsequent purchase

• Moved ‘Custom’ game creation button above ‘Sandbox’
  
• Multiple Pipe Connectors are no longer placed when click-dragging the cursor during placement
  
• Added new models for growing, and fully grown Carrot & Potato resources
  
• Added admin command “anim on” and “anim off” to toggle worker bounce animations

As always, I welcome your feedback or suggestions on these forums or the Discord. Next up I plan on continuing work on the Campaign, and will add Map #5! Cheers and thanks for playing,

Erik

These are new buildings that spawn in unpurchased territory. They always offer 3 randomly assigned trades that are very advantageous. However, they are classified as NPC buildings so you can not move them around - you have to bring goods to them! By default, 8 of them spawn on a map but you can change this value in the 'edit map' section when creating a new game.

You can build them and change their recipes in creative mode. You can also add new trading post recipes in the Game Rules Editor. Any recipes assigned while editing the map will be fixed in place during non-creative playthroughs, opening up some interesting possibilities for custom map scenarios.


After a long delay, Campaign Map 4 is now available. I wanted to make this one pretty unique, so it needed some additional features to be built before I could finish it.

The setting is one large main island, with a different trading post on each of the 4 major shorelines. There is an abandoned railway running through a desert region. Perhaps it was once used to move goods across the island?

To win the scenario you will need to generate Elixirs and other goods that can only be acquired from the Trading Posts. So you must establish some trading routes and probably make use of Freight Rail cars to deliver large quantities of items for trade.

• Added new Create Game property: Trade Recipes. This is a list of recipes that the Trading Posts will choose from on map creation. New trade recipes can be added here. Any of these recipes can be assigned to the trading post in Creative mode.
  
• New option when customizing new random map: Trading Posts, which let you choose how many trading posts should spawn
  
• Rail Cars now default to including top-level Train filter in its logic, but the rail car can specify whether the Train filter should be active or not. This also fixes a bug where a fixed-filter rail car (like Hopper) would ignore train filters for specific goods due to its built-in Loose Bulk filter always taking precedence.
  
• ‘Packed only’ and ‘Unpacked only’ filter restrictions can now be specified for item categories like ‘Gourmet’
  
• Recipes with inputs that are not produced in map (based on custom rules) are no longer automatically removed, as they may be produced by Trading Posts
  
• Replaced NPC building particle effects (when they appear on a newly purchased terrain chunk) with an exclamation point icon that disappears when you select the building
  
• Updated ‘Rail’ tutorial map to include Freight Cars
  
• Alert icons are hidden during Campaign intro cutscenes

• Freight Cars are now dependent on Steam Locomotive research, not Steam Engine research
  
• Removed Red Coin cost from Farm Herbs recipe
  
• Campaign 2 starts player with General Store and a worker delivering Planks so they get an example of how Red Coins are produced. Also flattened out some terrain near starting area and disabled several Kitchen recipes which were impossible to produce or consume.

• Fixed bug: Steam Connectors over Water Pumps could be assigned “Water” filter if an outlet pipe built from them in the same session they were created. Similar bug with Water Connectors and the Steam Generator.
  
• Fixed bug: Custom recipes defaulted with Enabled property set to Off
  
• Fixed bug: In creative mode, some objects were not appearing in build menus if they had been disabled by active rule set or if map launched with creative mode off
  
• Fixed bug: When moving rail cars and re-attaching them to existing train, would create a bad train link that could cause errors when highlighting or deleting that train car in the future. Any bad links currently in games are automatically fixed during game load.
  
• Fixed bug: Transfers to or from Rail Cars were being accidentally limited during train station stops. New behavior is that an unlimited number of items can be transferred to a single Rail Car per transfer attempt.
  
• Fixed bug: Non-physical items like ‘Steam’, ‘Fuel’, ‘Knowledge’, etc would appear as pick-up options for workers, and would be transferred by ‘Deliver All’ commands
  
• Fixed missing localization on ‘PlayerActionCloseTopMenu’
  
• Fixed bug: placing structures would immediately show 'occupied' error after successful placement, instead of waiting for cursor to move
  
• Fixed bug: when placing Farm Tiles over crops the crop icon would obscure placement position
  
• Fixed bug: ALT key activation of ‘remove block’ tool would prevent correct hotbar assignments to top row
  
• Fixed bug: Context commands menu would be displayed when backing out to the main menu
  
• Fixed bug: Item filters specifying categories like ‘Gourmet’ would ignore packaged versions of items matching that category.
  
• Fixed bug: attaching a new rail cart wouldn’t immediately apply the relevant top-level train filter

Hotfix .171k:

- Fixed missing recipes for basic medicine items in Campaign Map 4 (bandage, remedy, fish oil, protein shake). Also disabled Mana Brick, sellable books, and Specialty Goods Store. Retroactively affects campaign maps already in progress
- Removed sellable books from Campaign Map 3
- Fixed hotbar items loading with incorrect locked display state

- Fixed launch crash introduced in .169
- Fixed missing localization on ‘Complete Construction’ recipe output for Omnitemple

Hotfix 170a:
- Fixed issue where filters (e.g. fluid pipe connectors) were being assigned the wrong value on legacy files

Hotfix 170b:
- Retroactively fixes connector filters that had been broken by previous update

- Boxcar inventory increased from 40 to 50
- Added new Interface option: ‘Secondary Action Delete’ to determine whether the right-click button destroys blocks if you click down on them. This defaults to ON for legacy players and OFF for new players.
- Players can hold the Alt button to temporarily activate the Remove Block tool without changing their build object. (This is meant to allow for convenient block deletion even if Secondary Action Delete is off)
- Formatting improvements to context controls menu
- Added Camera Controls to context controls menu, when in default cursor mode
- Fixed bug: blurry textures on some buildings
- Fixed bug: ‘Supply All’ behavior would never supply recipe inputs that were filter categories (i.e. Fuel)
- Fixed bug: buildings with lots of recipe inputs could have some of their ingredient icons hidden in the pop-up menu when assigning a worker behavior target
- Fixed bug: Crystals could get stuck at an input Mana Connector on save / reload. Happened if the crystal was fully depleted, the Output connector was a separate pipe, and the output pipe was full at the time of map save / reload. Also happened if crystal was depleted when it arrived at the input connector, even without save / reload.
- Fixed bug: deleting an entire train would fail to refund attached rail cars & their inventories
- Fixed bug: Minecarts with filters that didn’t match Loose Bulk items would accept any item
- Fixed bug: If Cancel action mapped to a hotkey that is not mapped to camera pan or move, it was waiting for hotkey release instead of triggering on hotkey press, making it less responsive
- Fixed bug: when moving Conveyor Belts, the directional arrow preview would be incorrect for South and West directions
- Fixed bug: was using wrong text for the “No Fuel” alert on Steam Locomotives

In this update I've added several new rail cars to make the Train system much more interesting and useful!

Previously players only had access to Minecarts, which could hold a decent amount of goods but for very high throughput, players had to spam them everywhere which created lots of traffic jams. But now, you can research Freight Rail Cars and unlock 3 new units:

• Hopper Car - holds 100 units of any 'Loose Bulk' goods. This includes grain, stones, ores, flour, and basic crops. (the same filter as what the Chutes have)
  
• Tank Car - holds 100 units of any Fluid. This includes water, milk, fruit juice, etc. (the same filter as Fluid Pipes)
  
• Boxcar - holds 40 units of any item, including packed goods.

There's a few catches to these higher-capacity cars. They are larger than minecarts, each taking up 2 block units. Also they can only be loaded and unloaded at Train Stations - Minecart loaders will have no effect. So that means they must be pulled by a Locomotive. But, they should be extremely useful for moving large quantities of items across long distance especially for specialized goods.

To balance things out, the Minecarts now only accept Loose Bulk goods. So they are still useful for simple transport unprocessed materials, but won't be good for the 'last mile' deliver to markets and such. Note that this might be a disruptive change, so I added a new game rule 'Restrict Minecart Inventory' that will default to OFF for any games created before this update. It will default to ON for any newly created games. You can of course change this any time in the Editor / Edit Rules page.

Moving and rotating trains has been made much easier too. And there's now a button right on the Locomotives to add a new car to the back of the train.


There's also a new cosmetic change: The "Gourmet Foods Store" is now simply called the Tavern. And it has updated art too:





Here's the full patch notes:

- Added Boxcar, which is a 2-length rail car that holds 40 items
- Added Tank Car, which is a 2-length rail car that holds 100 units of fluid
- Added Hopper Car, which is a 2-length rail car that holds 100 units of loose bulk goods (same filter as Chute: ores, crystals, grain, flour, fertilizer, etc)
- Boxcar, Tank Car, and Hopper Car all occupy 2 blocks and can only be loaded / unloaded at a Train Stop.
- Added new research “Freight Cars”, which unlocks Boxcar, Tank Car, and Hopper Car.
- Added button on Steam Locomotives to directly attach railcars to the end of the train
- Move and rotation tools now work on entire trains
- Added new Global Rule: Restrict Minecart Inventory. Default is ON, which adds a “Loose Bulk” top-level filter restriction to all Minecarts. Note that for any legacy maps the Default for this new rule is OFF (meaning minecarts can still load any item) to prevent interfering with current builds.
- Newly attached train cars will follow existing track lines
- “Gourmet Foods” store is now called “Tavern” and its building model has been updated
- Total inventory slot capacity is displayed and not just item count
- Campaign map 2 added a new victory condition requiring Base Level 4. This is to help guide players towards the base upgrade which is required for other buildings.
- Tooltip for Research will indicate which worker units are unlocked by it
- Steam Locomotive only outputs smoke particles if consuming fuel
- ‘Rollable’ filter (items that can be transported in Chutes) has been renamed to ‘Loose Bulk’

- Increased maximum rail car speed on Magic Rails by 25%
- Eggs, Ethers, and Mana Crystals (charged or depleted) are no longer considered Rollable / Loose Bulk (meaning they can no longer be placed in a Chute, or in a Hopper car)
- Filters on minecarts and rail cars will override any train-level filters. Previously the filter effects were merged.

- Fixed bug: Move Tool was unlinking rail cars and stopping worker unit behavior on selection, not on move confirmation.
- Fixed bug: When moving a Steam Locomotive, its potential new position could be blocked by current position
- Set default OSX rendering path back to Metal, with fallback OpenGLCore, instead of the other way around. OpenGLCore default was causing performance issues for many OSX players. If OSX players encounter display issues (missing world items) due to this change, they can specify a launch option of ‘-force-glcore’
- Fixed bug: attached minecarts (with no Engine) were treating first minecart’s filter as a train-level filter
- Fixed bug: hitting the ‘Go’ button on a rail car or train would not cause it to move if the game was paused


Enjoy! And as always, feel free to join in the discussion on the Discord server: https://discord.gg/factorytown

- When using the Move tool on any worker unit / rail car, it no longer performs the reposition immediately after selecting the unit & moving the mouse. It will now keep the original unaffected until you click down to select the new location. This also allows you to move the camera via right click while moving, or to cancel the move action before it is performed.
- Minecarts can be attached to train by highlighting underlying track, not just by highlighting the target rail car
- Fixed bug - train locomotives were not occupying secondary navigation position on game load, resulting in ability to attach other rail cars in overlapping positions
- Fixed bug - unreliable results when moving rail cars

- Fixed bug: inconsistent behavior of camera move & pan commands
- Fixed bug: game would ignore first input drag command (camera look, camera pan) when it regained focus after running in background
- Fixed bug: minecarts attached to parent trains might be placed in the wrong facing direction, preventing future attachments
- Fixed bug: was possible to dismiss some main menus by clicking outside the menu, resulting in a blank menu state


Hotfix .166a:

Fixed bug: single-right-click to delete a block would cancel the build action

- When in creative mode, added ability to right-click on buildings and choose to ‘Lock’ or ‘Unlock’ them. Locked buildings will then not be modifiable by the player outside of creative mode.
- Steam Locomotives now occupy 2 rail tiles (any existing trains will occupy the additional rail tile as soon as space is available)
- ‘Cancel’ action is now mapped to RMB by default (mapping is preserved for previous players). It triggers only if click down + click up occurs without dragging or performing another action, so it won’t interfere with other action mappings. NOTE: Players from previous versions will have this mapped to Z, if you want this new behavior, you will need to manually remap using Options / Controls.
- New Input option: ‘Close Top Menu’. Used to back out of menus, without having to use ESC (which is not remappable). Default key is Z
- Can now right-click on Hotbar item to show ‘Delete’ option, that removes it from the hotbar
- Improved display of Goods Supply panel, now Supply and Happiness status meters are shown separately, and removed obsolete item tier icon
- House happiness panel now shows a checkmark icon for “Supplied” state instead of a less-relevant timer icon for consumption time
- Fixed bug: Mines would occasionally get stuck in a state where they stop producing anything. Any mines that were currently stuck are fixed upon map load
- Fixed bug: was failing to load custom presets for rules, scenarios, and maps in Create Game menu
- Fixed bug: when trying to move invalid buildings, error message was shown when placing buildings instead of when trying to pick it up
- Fixed bug: Inputs mapped to Select Column and Select Block did not have any effect
- Fixed bug: minecarts accepting items that didn’t match filter (happened if minecart and loader had completely conflicting filters, game treated that as an ‘accept everything’ case instead of a ‘exclude everything’ case)

Hotfix .165c:

- Fixed bug: selecting a worker and then right-click-drag resource to destination was moving camera instead of assigning harvest command