Roads, Farms, and Meltdowns

This month I worked on new content for the player! There’s more of that to come, but here’s what’s coming to Alpha 3 so far:

• Roads: colonists move twice as fast! Less time going to work, more time working!
• Warehouse and Batteries: You now need places to store your resources. You need to be careful with placement, batteries are explosive!
• Farm Overhaul: Instead of simply providing food while being worked, colonists now need to work on the farm for a long time, then produce a bunch of food all at once. Planning and defense is more important than ever!
• Reactor Overhaul: Reactors now produce a lot of power, and don’t require colonists to work in them, but there’s a catch. If you have excess power and no batteries to store it, the reactors will overheat and explode!
• Rebalanced Economy: All workable buildings now follow the same model as the farm — colonists work for several turns then produce some resources. The resource numbers are generally smaller than before, but easier for me to balance.

Here’s a little screenshot of a colony with some of the new buildings: 

Next month I’m hoping to finish up the new content for Alpha 3. A few new defensive buildings, new map generation options, revamped enemy spawning. After that, there will a long tail of balance, graphics, UX, and tutorial work, likely lasting a couple more months. I guess that puts Alpha 3 out December/January.