[2021] Bonus Update for 2020

Without the distractions of having to run the studio I've been able to dust off my programmer legs and get a bunch of work done on Stationeers. Additionally, without people in the office I've been able to do some larger refactors that were hard when others are around, as I needed to change every file.



So here we are! A surprise update with quite a few changes, a few additions, and a lot of fixes.

New Jupiter and Saturn models
I changed the models to much better materials, they look beautiful! I also changed their position so if you're using them for navigation or orientation, they will be in a different spot.

Stationpedia additions
A whole bunch more information is now in the Stationpedia. Includes build state information, what things are used in, logic slot variable information, mode strings - and more!

Solid Generator Changes
Improved to be less wasteful and more consistent. Fixed a number of bugs with it. Additionally, there is now Charcoal that you can make using Biomass in a furnace. This burns quicker than Coal.

Smelting revised
A number of changes supplied by one of our team here who plays a lot of Stationeers. These are pretty major, check out the stationpedia in game for more info, but briefly:

• All super alloy recipes have undergone significant rebalance to shift the alloy furnace use towards high pressure operation.
  
• Normalized many furnace temp and pressure limits to 99999, vs, i.e random temp ceilings of 5k.
  
• Increased minimum pressure requirements for most standard alloys.
  
• Raised steel temperature requirements from 600 to 900.
  
• Lowered electrum temperature from 700 to 600.
  
• Shrunk Constantan temperature range to between 1000-1300, instead of 1500
  
• Solder now has a very high pressure requirement, at 20000KPa
  
• Invar has its pressure range shifted up to between 18000KPa, and a upper temperature limit of 1500

Food/Plants revised
Complete rebalance of the food system. Addition of a whole bunch of new food options, including canned food. Check out the stationpedia for information about these.

Harvie has been changed to be passive, the "face" is now a button to either plant/harvest, and you can control it through variables with the logic system.

Chemistry revised
Recipes have been changed and the step of processing many reagents has been removed. You can directly add the reagents to the chemistry station to make Heal pills.

Trade value rebalance
Together with all the changes above, I also heavily changed the trade values. This is just the start, much more to come here.

- Dean

Version 0.2.2702.13089

• Fixed many loading exceptions for prefabs that were missing their transforms (rover, wreckage, cartridgeguide, cartridge tracker, and more).
  
• Fixed missing picture frame prefab references causing exceptions on game load.
  
• Fixed missing wreckage prefab references causing exceptions on game load.
  
• Added able to set Logic Dial via logic system, by writing to the Setting variable.
  
• Fixed exception when trying to use smartrotate (C key) with Hydroponics Device.
  
• Fixed Harvie causing exceptions when used with logic system. Was calling main thread commands on logic thread, now made thread safe.
  
• Refactored Chemistry Station. Now no longer have to make "packets" of reagents in the reagent mixer. Directly use relevant resources on the Chemistry station.
  
• Balanced Chemistry recipes to work with current plant reagent values. For example, a stun pill is made from 10 ferns and 4 units of carbon.
  
• Fixed Stationpedia was displaying Resources that technically could be used on the thing, but didn't have an actual recipe. Now only shows resources used with a device that a recipe exists for.
  
• Fixed Stationpedia not correctly displayed "Used In" Catergory for items. This category tells you broadly what something is used for, for example charcoal can be used in the solid fuel generator or the chemistry station.
  
• Added build state to Shuttle Landing Pad. Use Welder and two steel to complete the landing pad.
  
• Added build state information to stationpedia. Shows a visual of the build state, and what tools/resources are required for construction. Currently does not include deconstruction.
  
• Disabled "pinging" object using middle mouse button. Defeated the purpose of trackers, subject to spam, looked bad, and was bad not well optimized.
  
• Fixed Shuttle Landing Pad placement. Was using small grid, now fixed to large grid. Also now checks for a frame below. Added smart rotate placement options (finding connections by pressing C).
  
• Rebalanced Alloys and Super Alloys. All super alloy recipes have undergone significant rebalance to shift the alloy furnace use towards high pressure operation. Normalized many furnace temp and pressure limits to 99999, vs, i.e random temp ceilings of 5k. Increased minimum pressure requirements for most standard alloys. Raised steel temperature requirements from 600 to 900. Lowered electrum temperature from 700 to 600. Shrunk Constantan temperature range to between 1000-1300, instead of 1500. Solder now has a very high pressure requirement, at 20000KPa. Invar has its pressure range shifted up to between 18000KPa, and a upper temperature limit of 1500.
  
• Fixed chute resource exploit. Hydralyic pipe bender produced it at only 1 Iron, and it returned for greater amount that cost to make in the recycler. Now unified the recipe costr.
  
• Moved Empty Can manufacture from toolmanufacturer to autolathe.
  
• Replaced Organic Material with Biomass. All plants placed into the recycler will produce biomass, which when burned in the furnace at lower temperatures, produce Charcoal which can be used in the solid fuel generator.
  
• Added stationpedia descriptions for trading structures, to better explain how to setup contact with a trader.
  
• Added Charcoal. Made from organic products put into a furnace at relatively low temperatures. Poor burning in the solid fuel generator, but better than nothing if needed.
  
• Removed organic matter as method of mushroom creation as was too convoluted.
  
• Changed Horizontal and Vertical variables for Daylight sensor to be local, as SolarAngle is.
  
• Added Resource Used lists to Microwave, Chemistry Station, and Paint Mixers in Stationpedia. Back references added for all their ingredients.
  
• Fixed canned food had incorrect bounds offset, resulting in weird placement in chutes.
  
• Fixed trade values for food were not applying player trade penalty. Now plants are substantially more expensive to buy than to sell, because plants can be grown into other things. Once processed (say into canned food), they hold their value much better.
  
• Balanced trade values for many things. Such as ensured that empty filters are worthless when trading. SuperAlloy components are very expensive.
  
• Added Used By Stationpedia section. Resources can now give a reference to what they are used in, such as Coal ore pages providing links to the Solid Generator.
  
• Refactored Solid Fuel Generator operation to provide constant power and not stop each tick.
  
• Added Resources used to the Stationpedia, loaded for Solid Generator and Reagent processor currently.
  
• Moved Powered Bench from furniture kit to Table kit, as people were often struggling to find it.
  
• Added additional energy cost for filtration machine. Now it uses between 0 and 100W depending on how much gas is being pumped through the filter.
  
• Changed default hunger rate from 25% to 50%
  
• Balanced starting equipment. Replaced Flowers in starting crates with canned food to ease starting pressure of hunger requirements. Replaced some of the starting cereal bars with canned food.
  
• Fixed electronic printer mod was stuck on Tier 2 when it should be tier 1, as the first mod upgrade you need to make.
  
• Fixed tutorial button causes null reference when clicking it without selecting a tutorial. Now it will by default select the first tutorial, and if no tutorials are found the button will be non-interactable.
  
• Removed obsolete loading routines that caused much of the game data to be loaded from disk several times during application initialization. This should reduce load times fairly significantly on game start.
  
• Fixed unable to remove cables or interact with plants.
  
• Refactored handling of game prefab loading. Was previously using an expensive and depreciated way to load game data. First pass of changing this to precache all prefabs. This will allow better options for caching and reducing loading times, as well as performance when creating items during a game.
  
• Removed shadowcasting from cables, to assist with performance.
  
• Refactored light caching to be done during prefab load, and then reused when cloning of prefab. Giving a small performance bonus during load and game creation. Proof of concept to reduce awake initialization in future.
  
• Updated Saturn in Mimas map with better material, fixed planet shadow so ring is correctly shadowed, repositioned to not conflict with solar orbit.
  
• Updated Jupiter in Europa map with better material, repositioned to not conflict with solar orbit.
  
• Added TerrainLod versus distance occlusion for some objects. Large objects, such as wall frames, the Satellite Dish, and some cladding will be rendered to a maximum distance of the terrain lod. Everything else will be occluded either at their render distance settings, or not at all if the chunk has not been loaded yet.
  
• Added TerrainLod now does not "cut out" below you unless there is a chunk below you. This means that when you are flying along, you will no longer see blank world.
  
• Refactored how things handle updates required per frame. Will provide some performance benefits to those with large bases. This relates to how the game engine handles scripts that need updates every frame. This is now handled collectively.
  
• Balanced Wall Heater/Cooler. Now use roughly same basic equations for calculating power used. Both have a minimum power cost (10W), and then both also take out how much power they used during the tick (up to 1000W, depending on efficiency for Cooler) and draw from the network. This means both devices use more power depending on what they have done during a tick.
  
• Fixed rendering distance for things. Old implementation was broken by a settings change. Temporary fix is to require the chunk to be rendered, as well as the things render distance settings. This means things will not be rendered unless their chunk is.
  
• Added Combustion Logic variable to some devices, such as gas sensor, pipe analyser, tanks with data connections, furnaces. Returns 1 if atmosphere is on fire, and 0 if not.
  
• Added allowing of mounting of devices to window pieces.
  
• Added cables can cross through straight and corner chutes. Window and device chutes still cannot be crossed. Some chute kits now require more kit pieces to construct.
  
• Balanced various recipes in autolathe, electronics, pipe bender, and tool printers. Moved all "mods" for upgrading the printers to the electronics printer. Require the use of super alloys for the hardsuit items.
  
• Increased eat speed for canned goods dramatically.
  
• Fixed plants would often say they did not have sunlight in their status messages when they did. Now correctly reports health state in status message.
  
• Removed conveyor kit from autolathe as it is depreciated. Not working well, causing bugs and due to the open nature of the conveyor it causes physics performance issues. Chutes are a far superior alternative for the player currently.
  
• Added Hydroponics Device. This is the Hydroponics Tray, but classed as a device and with a wire connection. This will mix atmospheres between both it's pipe inputs (for water), and make its slot data available to the network. Works with the Harvie. Note that you cannot place these sequentially, like with the normal tray. They must have a pipe between them.
  
• Refactored how Harvie (auto planting device) works with Hydroponics tray. The import slot now works as either a trigger, interactable slot, or feeding with a chute. You have to manually activate the Harvie for planting/harvesting. If you press "activate" on the device, then it will try to plant if the tray below is empty. If it is not empty, it will try to harvest. Anything received will be placed into the Export slot. You can use the Logic Harvest and Plant commands to activate the machine, if you want to do this automatically.
  
• Fixed jetpacks were not using gas when stabilizing.
  
• Fixed hard jetpack was using substantially more moles than it should have been. Now very slightly more efficient than the basic jetpack.
  
• Added Stationpedia now reports LogicSlotType for things. This is useful for using the logic system with slot readers.
  
• Added Logic Mode data to stationpedia. Now ModeStrings and values will be shown, where known. This is very useful for reference when programming devices using mode with logic systems.
  
• Increased repair speed substantially for damaged solars when using Duct Tape.
  
• Added Mushrooms are damaged when in sunlight, they must be in darkness or they will take damage. More sunlight will mean more damage.
  
• Fixed Harvie missing thumbnail images.
  
• Increased Fern harvest yield from two to four.
  
• Changed Insulated pipes recipe to use Steel and Silica instead of only Silica, as it's intention is not to be used as an early game pipe.
  
• Removed solar panel occasionally going back a build state during a storm. While a cool mechanic, the created glass panel was flying across the map. Instead relying directly on damage to the solars.
  
• Increased regularity of damage to solars during a storm, however the actual damage is much lower.
  
• Increase Jetpack gas usage as you barely ever needed to add more gas.
  
• Added headlamp automatically turning off when added to a structures inventory, such as suit storage.
  
• Fixed Jetpack Basic accidentally set as Tier Two item.
  
• Fixed stationpedia was only displaying one recipe per creator, meaning you would not know of alternate ways of making things.
  
• Fixed Air Tank low warning displaying out of range number. Now based on mole count remaining compared to breathing rate.
  
• Removed food from organics printer, as this was only intended for debug purposes.
  
• Moved Shelf construction to Locker Kit, as it makes more sense it is with a storage kit.
  
• Changed Rover to require much more steel to construct.
  
• Changed autominer to require more resources to construct.
  
• Added ability to deconstruct the Elevator Carriage using a Drill.
  
• Fixed Wheat and Soybeans not providing Organic Material when placed in Centrifuge.
  
• Fixed planted items show briefly before turning into their first growth stage. Now correctly invisible till they grow, which is usually only a single tick - but only happens if growth requirements met.
  
• Changed Mushrooms to consume Oxygen and output Carbon Dioxide, as real fungi does.
  
• Increased tomatoes required to make Tomato Soup (from 5 to 10) to better balance with nutrition and yield amounts for Tomatoes.
  
• Changed Empty Can to stackable. Now empty cans can be stacked into up lots of ten.
  
• Increased weather event minimum (60s to 120s) and maximum (5min to 10min) lengths.
  
• Decreased weather damage per tick for dynamic items.
  
• Added Damaged Solar Panels can be repaired with DuctTape.
  
• Added Horizontal and Vertical outputs to Daylight Sensor. Note: -y is inverted for this, so you will not need to flip for solar settings. Existing functionality is currently not changed for the daylight sensor, and SolarAngle will respond to Mode changes as before. But it is recommended new solar setups be built using Horizontal and Vertical variables directly off the Daylight Sensor.
  
• Fixed Corn reagent missing from tradeables, so traders wouldn't assign value to corn.
  
• Added Bread Loaf made from flour and Soy Oil.
  
• Added Corn Soup, made from corn and an empty can.
  
• Added canned food returns an empty can that can be reused.
  
• Fixed Soy Oil and Milk causing floating errors, preventing the creation of some recipes such as Fries.
  
• Added Bread Loaf, made from Flour and Oil, in the microwave.
  
• Fixed Corn Reagent missing, preventing corn based recipes from being made.
  
• Changed Tomato Soup to require an Empty Can (Steel) to make
  
• Added Empty Can as a craftable item on the autolathe.
  
• Added Pumpkin Soup made from Pumpkin and an Empty Can.
  
• Reduced energy usage of Headlamp
  
• Increased CO2 output of smelting/using Coal Ore
  
• Fixed Portable Air Conditioner would vent its gases externally when wrenched to tank connector. Now turns itself off when wrenched down, allowing its gas to be fed into the connector.
  
• Fixed Jetpack Basic recipe was missing from Tool Manufacury.
  
• Fixed elevator carrage was being destroyed during storms. Now takes no damage during storms.
  
• Fixed advanced gas tanks were using wrench for deconstruct. As this was also used for wrenching down, it meant you could accidentally deconstruct it while trying to wrench down and off. Now uses Drill like other items to deconstruct.
  
• Fixed gas tanks were using wrench for deconstruct. As this was also used for wrenching down, it meant you could accidentally deconstruct it while trying to wrench down and off. Now uses Drill like other items to deconstruct.
  
• Fixed Crate and Crate MkII were using wrench for deconstruct. As this was also used for wrenching down, it meant you could accidentally deconstruct it while trying to wrench down and off. Now uses Drill like other items to deconstruct.
  
• Fixed tier item settings missing for many items. Now items will require their correct tier device to build. NOTE: this doesn't currently show in stationpedia, an update shortly will fix this.