Beta 1 Update

Thank you for joining Early Access and providing such great feedback! We still have a lot of work to do. Progress will be slow and steady. If this new update causes you issues, please let us know in the Offworld Trading Company Support forums. Save games may not be valid between updates. Thank you!

[ Gameplay ]

  • Engineering Lab now works faster
  • Rebalanced Patent costs
  • Increased cost of Nanotech
  • Mutinied buildings no long show lines to the takeover HQ
  • Cannot do two espionages of the same type at the same time
  • Fixed bug with getting too much back from cancelled Offworld shipments (thanks IDomin!)
  • Robotic players now get adjacency bonus if they put secondary buildings next to primary ones. (A steel mill next to an iron mine, for example)
  • Steel Mills consume 50% more power
  • Players on higher handicaps receive less starting life support resources
  • Robotic player consumes 100% more electronics
  • Reduced auction safety time (to prevent you from bidding immediately after another bid came in) from .75 seconds to .5 seconds.
  • Free claim from founding later now comes at different HQ levels
  • Glass Furnace are now built with Steel + Silicon, Electronics Factory with Steel + Aluminum
  • Daily challenge now defaults to Executive level
  • After buying out another player, no one else can buy your stock (or buy you out) for 8 seconds
  • Perks acquired in auctions in the campaign game are now temporary and only apply to that current scenario
  • Reduced effect of Hacker Array on maps with more players

 

[ Art ]

  • New dust storm!
  • New solar panel!
  • New water mine!
  • New geothermal plant!
  • Fixing geothermal vents when in observer mode

[ Terrain ]

  • Dry Ice and Water Ice now have a different visual appearance
  • Fixed resource generation bug in craters
  • Fixed rare crater-in-crater height offset bug
  • Updated appearance of Cracked and Volcanic terrains
  • Fixing terrain batching index-out-of-bounds error

[ UI ]

  • Resolved problems by going fullscreen in OSX (Mac)
  • Setting fullscreen checkbox to be in sync with fullscreen setting (from changing through a menu on OSX)
  • Fixing ClickToScan error message in observer mode
  • Increased the size of the selected building options UI and added icons to the buttons
  • Holding down Shift now changes the color of selected building option buttons for any buttons that are affected
  • Campaign tooltip fix.
  • Making tooltips for Start/stop auto-purchasing building input. Now with bright red letters to let you know you’re about to wreck your game by using it.
  • Added an icon for Pirates

[ Audio ]

  • Fixing audio error message when placing an underground nuke

[ Multiplayer ]

  • Server ping is displayed as a dash if it doesn’t have a value
  • Added column headings to the server list
  • Resetting previously selected Mod option to fix lobbies not showing up for some people
  • Reduced network traffic to try to lower lag

[ Performance ]

  • Improving performance for starting a new game by 2x
  • Improving scanning performance by 25ms per frame when the map is mostly revealed
  • Improving ice-condenser placement performance

[ Graphics ]

  • Enabling SSAO post process in High Graphics Quality
  • Adding frame limiter dropdown in Options Screen with choices 100FPS, 60FPS, 30FPS, V-Sync 1 interval, V-Sync 2 interval

[ Localization ]

  • Localizing tutorial screen & intro text
  • Localizing Find Lobby Screen

[ Mods ]

  • Changed the error messages for validating mod files from displaying in the log file only to also being displayed on the screen. The name of the file being validated in now also displayed with the error or warning message.

[ Miscellaneous ]

  • Logging the application version number to output_log.txt to assist in tracking down bugs
  • Loosened the type restrictions on the schema files used to validate mods for the game
  • Limited the log file to 100 megabytes max.
  • “Tutorial” now “Learn to Play”
  • Orienting Mars on start screen to line up with standard orientation (THE SHAME)
  • Changelog: Show more/less buttons added to changelog for those who are interested in all the changes we’ve made.

Things that are not fixed yet but are working on:

  • Saving and loading games
  • Host migration for multiplayer (for when the host stops or ends the game)
  • Audio issues with the Mac.
  • Offline mode for single-player games
  • Providing players with a development roadmap so they know when to expect what
  • and a whole bunch of other cool stuff!

Optional: Revert to v0.1.5062

NOTE: You will not be able to play multiplayer with anyone not on the same version as you!

To update to the previous version:

  1. Select Offworld Trading Company in your Steam Library list
  2. Right-click and select Properties
  3. Select the BETAS tab
  4. From the dropdown, select prev_version and click Close
  5. Steam should pull down the changed files; if you ever want to go back, do the same as above but select default

Only the version prior to the current update will be made available.