New Content
It is time to share the hard work we were doing and get some constructive feedback before going to 1.0. I'll be on Discord to see how you're doing, but this new build should be a big step in the right direction. You can start the experimental branch now and enjoy it. If you do not know how, then go to your Steam library, find Sweet Transit and right-click on it to open Properties. In there, just open the Betas section and in Beta Participation choose the Experimental branch. Lastly, in Sweet Transit Settings decrease the autosave interval just in case.
Let's dive into what is new in the experimental. Here is the changelog:
Additions
- Added City Hall.
- Added Tradesmen.
- Added Rebars Factory.
- Added Cement Factory.
- Added Crusher for cement factory.
- Added Rotary Kiln for cement factory.
- Added Cement Mill for cement factory.
- Added Tobacco Farm.
- Added Corojo Farm.
- Added Cigar Lounge.
- Added Coffee farm.
- Added Opera House.
- Added Bank.
- Added Church of the Train.
- Added Cargo Station.
- Added Fertilizer bonus goods.
- Added bars mechanic that removes bad desirability and happiness decrease for residences in range.
- Added school mechanic that decreases the move-out rate by the factor of 10 for residences in range.
- Added church of the train mechanic that does not allow happiness to go below 100% for residences in range.
- Added banks settlement attractiveness buff that does not allow for it to go below 0.
- Added opera house mechanic that decreases goods consumption and increases tourism by 20% for residences in range.
- Added more newspaper story entries.
- Added credits after completing all of the newspaper content.
- Added combined settlement storage system when drag building. Structures act as one when built.
- Added resource icons to some items in the build panel.
- Added global stats for goods in the tooltip.
- Added potential production and consumption to the goods global stats' tooltip.
- Added support for multiple HUD goods lines.
- Added distribution center internal couriers.
- Added ability to add multiple filters to couriers;
- Added ability to take loans from the warehouse and a bank.
- Added search function in the build menu.
- Added search buttons in the build menu.
- Added build mode copy button.
- Added right click dropdown on build items to add them to quick selection.
- Added landfill tool.
- Added ability to upgrade wooden bridges to stone bridges.
- Added ability to place signals on rails that are on a road.
- Added ability to build multiple rail pieces on a road.
- Added ability for bridges and rail bridges to go above certain structures.
- Added ability for bridges and rail bridges to go above certain platforms.
- Added ability to build on top of underground passage tunnels.
- Added connection highlights when building production facility expansion structures that need other structures to function.
- Added name requirement signal support for commas to check for multiple names.
- Added flip option in the train depot to flip the whole train.
- Added train route condition to check how much cargo has been transferred.
- Added train route condition to check specific cargo amount in trains instead of only %.
- Added train route condition to check specific passenger amounts in trains instead of only %.
- Added train route condition to check specific rested passenger amounts in trains instead of only %.
- Added train route condition to check how much cargo is at the station.
- Added building a train tutorial.
- Added ability to duplicate route destinations.
- Added wagon transfer speed in the tooltip.
- Added station and settlement storage goods graphs to the goods tooltips.
- Added city achievement.
- Added only city achievement.
- Added settlements with inhabitants tracking so that only town or only city achievements could not be cheated.
- Added complete the game achievement.
- Added fast finish achievement.
- Added tiny achievement.
- Added rivers support to map generation.
- Added wind sound volume control in settings.
- Added steamdeck support for shift tools.
- Added date formatting support for different languages.
- Added wealth stats panel.
- Added in-game wiki.
- Added workers and travelers route destinations to the tooltip.
Changes
- Reworked swap workers logic.
- Reworked optional destinations.
- Reworked how balance is being calculated to make the results more pleasant.
- Updated build panel tutorial to mention new additions;
- Updated unlocks stamps panels.
- Updated localization.
- Improved how couriers pick up goods to avoid people carrying low amounts of goods.
- Improved how couriers balance picking up goods between destinations from single storage.
- Improved how build categories show items when settlement is selected.
- Improved how fast residences can provide workers to stations to avoid big station bottlenecks.
- Added fertilizer bonus goods to farms instead of books.
- Added sand to quarry output.
- Added sand to warehouse storage.
- Added sand to stone roads and settlement decorations cost.
- Made camera center to undo or redo operations.
- Made couriers always pick the shortest path instead of a random one.
- Made filter visible goods only those that can be produced.
- Made build panel guess build items without selection for settlements.
- Made unlocks always show the global list of items.
- Made unlocked conditions stack first.
- Made Train Depot UI scroll to the right when adding wagons;
- Made station platforms keep a single variation when a variation key is pressed.
- Reduced coal mine unlock requirement from 300 to 250 laborers.
- Reduced stone unlock requirement from 600 to 500 laborers.
- Reduced cotton unlock requirement from 1200 to 800 laborers.
- Reduced wheat unlock requirement from 2500 to 1700 laborers.
- Reduced iron unlock requirement from 5000 to 3000 laborers.
- Reduced meat unlock requirement from 500 to 200 craftsmen.
- Reduced cheese unlock requirement from 1800 to 1600 craftsmen.
- Reduced general storage tooltip footprint.
- Reduced bonus storage to satisfy production facilities for half a day.
- Reduced school books consumption from 60 to 15 per min.
- Reduced pump jack workers count from 20 to 10.
- Reduced brickwork workers count.
- Reduced bookstore workers count from 80 to 40.
- Reduced brickwork clay consumption by half.
- Reduced diesel and jet train fuel consumption.
- Reduced the no-work happiness debuff from -25% to -10%.
- Increased bar beer storage from 100 to 300.
- Increased brewery beer storage from 100 to 400.
- Increased second settlement storage tank capacity from 100 to 200.
- Increased DT20 unlock requirement from 1200 to 3000 transported diesel per day.
- Increased DT30 unlock requirement from 2400 to 6000 transported diesel per day.
- Increased DTJet unlock requirement from 2400 to 6000 transported jet fuel per day.
- Increased Tiny map achievement size from 256 to 512 for more fun experience.
- Increased stoneworks and craftsmen stoneworks stone production ratio.
- Increased default wait time condition from 20 to 40 seconds.
- Increased craftsman stoneworks cut stone output from 36 to 48 per min.
- Increased second tier goods wagon capacity and transfer speed.
- Increased max bridge lengths.
- Increased cargo station storage.
- Changed stone road unlock requirement to transport 100 cut stone.
- Changed st20 unlock requirement to produce 60 cut stone per min.
- Changed Jet20 unlock requirement to 3000 transported jet fuel per day.
- Changed closing next UI order with escape so that tabs close after build mode and selection.
- Changed infinite requirement to produce 240 extra goods per min instead of extra 50%.
- Changed the speed of the day from 20 to 24 minutes.
- Changed time for workers to get tired and be available for a switch while working to after ~8 hours.
- Changed time for workers to lose efficiency while working to after ~12 hours.
- Changed the time workers die of overexertion while slaving away to 24 hours.
- Included landfill info in the build panel tutorial.
- Included cargo route in the routes tutorial.
- Moved warehouse icon up.
- Rebalanced oil refinery values.
- Rebalanced cheese factory values.
- Rebalanced paper mill values.
- Optimized performance for large colonies.
You can view the full changelog in the game. I would also like to talk about some changes in more detail that I did not cover in previous blogposts.
Layering
There are some layering improvements I would like to highlight. Building rails on roads can now be done with signals and multiple rail pieces on a single road tile. Building bridges on top of those rails (without signals) and roads is also possible. Talking about building over things, bridges can now cross farm fields, station platforms, courier shacks and other small and short structures. And finally, passenger and cargo station underground passes can cross anything because they are underground, and I am sorry it took so long.
Bonuses
I kept hearing that building a Bar or a School was never worth it. This made progressing through them more of a chore than something to be waiting for. With the end-game content arriving, this might not be the case, but I wanted to increase satisfaction either way. Here is what I have added:
- - With bars, people will have beer, and the surrounding industry will not bother them so much. Pollution and desirability will be ignored for all residences in the road range.
- - School will teach your loyal workers how to be even more loyal, so that when goods are not provided, they will still stand by your side. The move-out rate will drop by 10 times for all residences in the road range.
- - Banks will invest in your settlements and will maintain positive attractiveness, no matter what you build.
- - Opera House will provide breathtaking performances from which workers will forget about their needs, by 20% or so.
- - Church of the Train is the holy structure that will forbid workers from being unhappy, no matter the hurdles.
The late game will allow you to play however you please and ignore the mechanics you choose just for your enjoyment. However, with great benefits comes great upkeep.
BrewBoost Hub
One of the new late game additions is the BrewBoost Hub. "A building that provides workers access to coffee at nearby Production Facilities. BrewBoost increases work performance by incentivizing workers to complete their productivity goals in exchange for access to the café." This means that it provides an efficiency bonus to all production facilities in a road range as long as coffee beans are coming. Brewboost works with settlement production facilities as well, and it does not require them to be the same type as a distribution center does.
Wealth
For newer players, wealth is pretty difficult to manage. It was challenging to know why balance was going in one or another direction. For this reason, a wealth panel is created to provide the full view of who contributes to your treasury.
Loans
Next, we have loans that can speed up your early game by quite a lot. Small loans can be taken from your warehouse or much larger ones from the bank. It will be needed with the new endgame content. But be careful with those loan sharks.
Goods
There have been multiple quality-of-life additions regarding understanding how well goods are produced and consumed. One of them is global statistics, which provides a quick way to find out if you are producing enough of something. Settlement storage and stations now track storage over time and it is visible in a graph. With these tools, it will be much easier to pinpoint the exact reason why there are some deficiencies in a production chain. In the future, I am planning to expand more on this.
There are still plenty of smaller features that I will try to finish during the next few weeks. For example, Church of the Train graphics, next to the Wealth Panel, it makes sense to make a goods section to get info on them. Also, smaller UI controls like wiki links in tooltips and so on. As always, leave feedback on Discord or Steam, and it will find its way to my list. Until the next blog post!
