We’ve hit 0.50! Maia’s latest update brings stability and some serious bug fixes. We’ve been working hard to eradicate as many issues as possible. We’ve also managed to squeeze in new features that improve gameplay such as custom maps, expanded research and a brand new robot.

New Features:

Climate Change

The option to change the climate of your map has been added. Players can choose from Megathermal, Mesothermal and Polar as well as choosing map sizes, flora and fauna population sizes, and whether the map is on an earthquake hotspot. With these new climates, come the introduction of new trees.



Mesothermal



Megathermal



Polar

Aye, Robot!

The utility robot has been added! At the moment this robot is equipped with a repair arm. This arm allows the robot to travel around the base repairing items. This frees up colonists to get on with other tasks like staying alive.



New Research Upgrades

The research system has been overhauled. One example of this is players can now add lithium to the colonist’s water if they choose to. This stabilizes colonist’s moods, however, it may cause… unwanted side effects. There is also the ability to research the new trees.



Necropsy

The Necropsy Table in the Research Lab can now be used to gain research data. Once the Colonists have killed the Megacephalalgia creature they can study a sample they collect.



Email System Scroll

Mail can now be scrolled through using arrows that appear after you receive 6 emails. This means players can control how they manage their emails. There are also new email icons to more easily show whether the email has been read.

The Only Good Bug Is A Dead Bug:

The largest part of this update is the amount of bugs that have been fixed. Here’s an extensive list of fixes and changes we have made to existing features in Maia.

IMP Robot Bug Fixes

IMP Robots now remember their correct orders when the game has been saved and loaded.

Robots will not become fixated on tasks that can not be completed.

Dig orders that were removed will no longer revert on loading.

Removing the last IMP Robot and using the IMP search button will no longer cause a crash.

Removed IMP Robot’s ghosts no longer count towards the robot safety limit.

IMP Robots will now take body bags to storage meaning a less cluttered base.

Thankfully, IMP Robots no longer deposit dead colonists (or building materials) in the rubble hopper.

IMP Robots now have an idle wander behaviour, They will not wait around to get encased in walls.

IMP Robots will store water barrels in more sensible positions.

IMP Robot turn speed has been slightly increased to speed up their productivity.

IMP Robot self awareness added.

Although quite rare, colonists and IMP robots may have conversations.

Power Bug Fixes

Flywheel and Super conductors now accurately display the amount of energy stored instead of defaulting to yellow.

Power capacity is also now tracked and sent in power report emails.

It will no longer be possible for underpowered objects to burst into flames. Items will also turn off if they are on fire.

Explosive Bug Fixes

Bounding Mines have been added and rebalanced for better effectiveness against large creatures.

The distance effected by a bounding mine has been tweaked.

When building a mine, there will no longer be an unwanted explosive mark decal.

Explosives exterior tile bug fixed.

Loading Game Bug Fixes

Maia had a few bugs caused by saving and loading the game. A lot of these bugs have been solved. These include:

Meteorites are now loading correctly and maintain their fossil type.

3D Nanoprinters now remember that they are printing on loading.

Hydroponic trees now maintain how much they have grown rather than resetting to their mid point.

Water Barrel’s now maintain their count on loading.

Locked doors save on load and doors will no longer appear inside the walls.

Fossils retain type on load and will be placed in stands correctly.

Plant sample containers now save the transferred KB.

Turrets save number of rounds remaining.

Colonist Bug Fixes and AI Improvement.

Limping colonists will not get stuck in a looping animation when they are dead. (No more zombies.)

Food energy intake has been rebalanced due to the colonists often starving to death.

Colonists are no longer standing inside each other.

If there are less than 3 available living people in the base, colonists will not wait in the airlock for a guard.

Colonists will now take care not to let the chickens go extinct.

More death reports have been added to inform the player of death from cave ins and explosives.

The hygiene need has been turned on and colonists will use toilets. Toilets animations have been synced up.

Colonists can now destroy unwanted glow sticks.

Medical beds are now much more effective at healing colonists.

Other AI Bugs

AI will now go towards the nearest interaction point on an object rather than a random one.

Creatures no longer stand in the same place as others.

Pets and Uberhuhns will no longer go outside into the dangerous atmopshere.

Dogs

Players will now randomly get one of two different dogs when starting a new game.

Flora Bugs Fixes

The shadows from the flora around Maia have been refined to look more realistic.

Fauna Bugs and Changes

Megacephalalgia creatures may now trash your wind turbines out of spite!

Megacephalalgia will now destroy seismic stations.

Molerat and Megacephalalgia destruction will now leave debris both large and small when destroying things.

More interaction points have been added to the creatures for their destruction.

Creatures no longer spawn on edges of maps. Beforehand this would increase frame rate, especially in “Ample” size custom maps.

Megacephalalgia’s grooming themselves no longer make inside tiles outside tiles.

Molerat tunnels have stopped effecting colonist build lists.[/list]

Door Bug Fixes

Bulkhead door physics have been tweaked for loading and saving.

Colonists will no longer experience doorway syndrome and forget what they were doing when walking through.

Bulkhead doors will no longer strip away big chunks of the colonist’s paths.

The Reinforced bulkhead door physics mesh has been redone.

Door locking information has been fixed.

Workshop table Bugs Fixed

Nukes can no longer be built out of crate paper and PVA, Colonists will have to use the workbench to create superconductors, fission reactors and fusion reactors.

Outside items will not be listed as Airlock when colonists create them on the workbench.

UI Bug Fixes

The bug that causes Maia’s UI to become warped and disappear has been worked on.

The lander and save buttons should now appear for all players.

Buttons no longer flash when they are not meant to.

Mail Bug Fixes

Screen effect for open mail has been corrected.

Players will now receive the correct failure message when all their colonists are dead.

Players should no longer receive mail spam for building materials.

Read emails now show a different icon to make it clearer for players.

New email system! Scroll buttons will appear after 6 emails making it easier for players to open and manage emails.

Research Changes

The research terminal has been improved.

The flicker bug has been reduced. The flicker bug was caused by not having enough storage or raw data.

Research rebalanced and improved, research raw data is now better distributed (64mb per job) and is used up by researching.

Two new needs for research equipment for better prioritisation.

There is now different levels of research equipment.

Necropsy table now has name text when placing the object in object building mode.

All research interaction points have been corrected.

Lander placement

Improvements have been made to stop the lander from falling on top of or too close to another one.

World Events

World events are now generated for 8 hours for all types of events. This was between 2-8 and some events had become too infrequent.

Light Rendering Improved.

The engine’s screen light tiles can now render up to 32 lights. This will reduce visual glitches and improve performance.

Light distance tweaked to fix hard edges.

GPU Usage

Many texture assets in Maia have been optimised, which has led to a large reduction of GPU memory usage and will improve graphics performance.

Tutorial Changes

Tutorial seed has changed. The way the Imp orders are counted has changed.

Other Bug Fixes

All known crash bugs fixed.

crash bugs fixed. Fix for rubble appearing in random rooms bug

Scrolling around screen when players have used Alt Tab has been stopped.

Black world tiles.

Full balance pass.

Here’s some gameplay:

We hope you enjoyed Maia’s Stardystopia Update, give us your feedback on the Steam Forum, on the Maia Forum or by mentioning #MaiaGame on twitter.

-Maia Team