Captain Zuff here and I’m excited to say that Blueprints have finally arrived with patch 0.4.14. Checkout our Blueprint Update video to see it in action or read on below for more details.
What’s new in patch v0.4.14
Blueprints
With Blueprints now in the game, you can create, import, and export your favorite factory layouts.
After building the Captain’s Office and unlocking Blueprint technology, you’ll have access to the Blueprints window which can be opened from the bottom toolbar or by pressing F4.
Blueprints are created by clicking the create icon and then dragging across any section of your factory you wish to save
Once created, give a name to your blueprint. You can also give a description which will appear when hovering over the blueprint.
You can also create blueprint folders which can store blueprints and other folders. They can then be easily arranged by dragging and dropping onto other folders.
To build a previously saved blueprint, select the blueprint and then click the Create button and then place it anywhere on the island. You can also rotate and flip the blueprint just like you can using the Copy and Cut tools.
Importing and Exporting Blueprints
Blueprints are shared via text strings. You can import and export with ease by clicking the appropriate buttons and copying or pasting from your clipboard.
You can also share and import blueprint folders the same way you can blueprints which can also contain any number of blueprints and other folders.
Sharing your blueprints
If you want to share or get blueprints, you can join our discord and chat with fellow Captains. And if you prefer a website, our community has you covered. A member of our discord (captain_of_coit) has launched a website: https://captains-haven.org Disclaimer: It’s not a page we officially run and is built solely by the community, but we wanted to highlight it here because we really appreciate it. In fact, the progress done is fascinating, given the blueprints were on an experimental branch for just about a week.
News on Update 1
Filip here to share some information on Update 1. I know that many of you are looking forward to the update, and we definitely do as well. Work is going forward, and the date is still set to Q2 2023.
Save compatibility for Update 1
Update 1 will have lots of significant changes and improvements. Several of the changes are more of a long-term investment (one of them is described below). To make it all happen, we will need to play our EA wildcard and break save compatibility. It was a hard decision for us, and it took several heated discussions, but we agreed that this is the best way forward. There is so much we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. And several performance improvements could not happen without breaking changes. Lastly, it’s not just about “what we can do” but how fast we can do it. Some changes could be done as backward compatible, but they would take at least twice longer to implement, and that’s an issue as our dev throughput is the biggest bottleneck right now. So with all that, we decided that for the future of COI, it is better if we break the save compatibility from time to time. However, we will never break save compatibility outside of major updates. And it also does not mean that every major update will break compatibility. We will only break compatibility if we have a significant reason to do so.
Blueprints introduced in this update will remain compatible so you can save and carry over your favorite designs! Blueprint compatibility was one of the key design requirements. After the Update 1 is launched, the current EA version will be kept in a separate Steam branch so you will be able to always go back to check out your creations.
Work on update 1
Due to the upcoming terrain editor, we have decided to rewrite our internal terrain representation. This is needed because otherwise, the editor would be hard to use. The current terrain representation was very complex in order to support dynamic terrain unlocking, which is something we won’t need anymore. By simplifying the representation, we get significant performance improvements in rendering and terrain simulation. It’s also one of the major reasons we had to break saves. We will cover the terrain changes in more detail in one of our next blog posts.
Also, thanks to Jeremy, we have an initial version of tree planting. It required lots of thinking because we had two clear requirements: be able to automate it and keep it immersive. We will share more updates on this in our future posts.
We are also looking into new content. We don’t like to promise much upfront, but we have several things in the works, such as new power production items – diesel generator II, two new tiers of nuclear power plants, and reprocessing facility to tackle the spent fuel issue. In fact, the new nuclear chain is so complex compared to the current that many of you will just refund the game once you see it 🙂 But we modeled it based on real-world production. Also, the new tree planting feature will affect our production chains, and there are at least two new machines coming into COI to support it.
There are many things we are working on for update 1, and one of them is a new entity called stacker. The stacker, while connected to a belt, automatically dumps materials onto the terrain. This is part of our effort to expand on terraforming capabilities, and it’s not the only improvement in that area that is coming in Update 1.
I also want to thank all of you for your great support and nice comments under our updates and on Discord; they are always so nice to read and boost the mood. But I would also like to remind everyone that these posts are not meant to be a full list of changes that are coming, so stay tuned for more.
Merch for crowdfunding
We know that our supporters are still waiting for the t-shirts and posters. Sorry, it’s taking us some time, but we are working on it. We did a few rounds of design, and it just wasn’t where we would like it to be, and that’s why it drags a bit. But don’t worry, we did not forget, it just needs a bit more time in the oven.
Community highlights
Recently we got our hands on an island from a player nicknamed Hob. It’s a really impressive build, so we took the opportunity to showcase a few screenshots here.
Fun facts
We all probably know by now how much haul trucks can carry. But did you know that they can carry an entire cat?
Full patch notes
New feature: Blueprints
Parts of the factory can be now saved as blueprints which are persisted between games.
Blueprints can be exported and shared with other players by copy-pasting strings.
Improvements
Transport construction now locks pillars for already confirmed segments, giving greater control over pillar placement.
Optimized game save encoding resulting in 5-10% smaller save size.
Fixes
Second tier of the Cargo Depot now also satisfies a goal in place of the first tier.
Assignments between entities are now honored when copy-pasting designs.
Increased max area for tools.
Cut and copy tools now correctly copy locations of transport pillars.
Balancing
Reduced the number of workers required in farms.
Added recipes to digest fruit and poppy.
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