The Occult Inspector asked if there was an update and we said-

This update will go live to every Clockwork Empires player via Steam!

We have also updated our Clockwork Empires: Development Progress report!

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Major player-facing additions this month:

added a new Mine system

improved Naturalist’s Office

improved Public House

added a Training Academy

lights!

many UI improvements

vast & sweeping Upkeep rebalancing

Game Over stats

The Larch

Begin the full Beta 54 changelog!

Mining

Mining interface completely overhauled; depth now unlocks deeper strata which the player may choose from when mining. Different stratum combine with nearby resource points to result in different sets of products when mining. Deep mines may find interesting things.

added 3 new Mine modules: Dewatering Pump for mines, Ventilation Unit, and Steam Distributor

rewrote ore vein distribution

FIXED: button bug with mines

FIXED: mine output bug in deeper stratum

FIXED: infinite new ore veins in mine

FIXED: horrifying infinite loop bug when acquiring 2nd bonus ore vein in mines

Offices

added new office type: “Training Academy” (your overseers can learn skills here faster than normal)

overhauled Public House (can select booze type to serve, booze type appearance is preserved when serving, colonists can self-serve, pub given larger effect on memories/QoL)

Naturalists now can be set to various modes including: Scouting, Hunting, Mineral Surveying

> a Scouting Naturalist can see extremely far, modified by naturalism skill

> a Hunting Naturalist will hunt – and will attempt to find game if none is visible (only Naturalists & crew may hunt now)

> a Mineral Surveying Naturalist surveys minerals in a normal way

Pubs will serve tea if they are out of everything else

removed Cot from Barracks

Naturalist’s Office given better tooltips

Pub: Booze Vats now required to increase Pub drink stock capacity

added Bureaucrat’s Desk: These can be built in the foreign office as an upgrade over Standing Desks to speed up your diplomacy point acquisition.

FIXED: can no longer reset research in lab with fewer points than advertised

FIXED: various incorrect utility caps in office jobs leading to unexpected behaviour with certain office workcrews

FIXED: science skill display in Laboratory

FIXED: header on Laboratory points filled alert

FIXED: various issues with Foreign Office jobs not being carried out correctly under some circumstances

FIXED: bug with mining techs

FIXED: changing research category in Laboratory could mark projects as “already researched”

FIXED: lab techs displayed “researched” after switching programs

FIXED: error in controlling skill for Foreign Office work

FIXED: Public House will no longer be stocked with booze you do not own

FIXED: “you need a barracks” warning firing when you already have a barracks

Characters

added unique icons to some of the new traits

added tech to boost quality of life for outdoor workers

foreigners who die inside your colony will now automatically receive burial

despairing colonists will cure themselves using Laudanum distributed from the Pub

balance: halved the maximum number of characters you can receive from a single immigration wave

balance: beds now restricted by character social class

balance: Cots and Lower Class Chairs no longer require upkeep

balance: killing for the first time gives a harsher emotional impact

balance: colonists with over 50 despair will start freaking out and cease to work until their despair is under 20 (If possible they will avail themselves of pub/chapel services to speed up recovery)

FIXED: friendship scripterror

FIXED: rare resetWeapon scripterror

FIXED: scripterror in “get swole” if overseer job was changed rapidly and thus anim name was lost

FIXED: eating fishperson pie is no longer considered cannibalism

FIXED: added additional check during character damage calc due to scripterror after attempt to damage deleted character

FIXED: a bug that was preventing colonists from getting memories sometimes

FIXED: unified name of all the variables for despair

FIXED: weird one-off script error with pathfinding not aborting correctly

FIXED: military morale check was backwards

FIXED: female armoured bandit did not have class-based anim defs leading to very rare errors that would freeze colonists in place forever under certain conditions

FIXED: military will no longer butcher corpses unless exceptional circumstances prevail

Economy/Workshops

new module: Advanced Workbench; allows creation of upkeep trunks, bricabrac, boxed modules in bulk

characters picking up a stack of m things from a stack of n items no longer play their animation m times; they play the animation once and pick up the entire stack, all at once

minor tag updates to a few commodities/foods

animal butchery now returns stacks of meat, like other resource-exploitation jobs

meat from when animals ‘butcher’ a corpse inside civilization will automatically be claimed by player

added The Larch (to research and then grow for a source of timber)

Workshop upkeep jobs are now handled by the workshop work crew, if a workshop work crew is available

booze commodities are now crates when not being drunk

balance: military modules now require upkeep

balance: reduced upkeep costs across the board, but especially for low end modules

balance: further upkeep nerfing (deal with it)

balance: nerfed upkeep costs EVEN MORE

balance: animal meat output increased

balance: failed upkeep now makes work take ~8x as long rather than completely shutting down workshops

FIXED: not saving/loading workshop module attached to a job between saves would cause production menu to occasionally not update when a job was complete

FIXED: commodities disappearing from stockpile when two containers are merged (again!)

FIXED: all instances of gathering materials for construction now require that you own said materials

FIXED: uncommon scripterror upon shiftchange for unfinished building when left unfinished for a very long time

FIXED: logic error in upkeep job creation causes building with exactly 1 upkeep cost to not perform upkeep correctly

FIXED: weird occasional scripterror when creating something in a workshop

FIXED: some module costs

FIXED: can no longer hit demolition many times on a building and cause errors

FIXED: beetles wouldn’t drop lacquer

Trade

if traders are already in your colony, additional traders will no longer appear until the existing traders have left

requesting traders via Foreign Office requires that no traders be on the map already

balance: traders will now always have some repair trunks and basic materials on them

balance: added opium to traders

FIXED: you can un-designate trade goods and the green outline will disappear

FIXED: Boxed rare paintings are now tradable

FIXED: traders will no longer appear w/o trade goods in their hands

FIXED: crash when opening trade office menu

FIXED: trade goods in stacks now correctly un-designate too

FIXED: subtle errors in Foreign Office to do with missions that involve requesting traders

Events

added a first pass at game over screen

added an Occult Inspector event

added Rogue Artist event

“singing terrain” event arc effect increased

Sunny Day now starts during the day (because it’s weird to start this at night)

made rogue stahlmarkian starting position more random

event arcs made smarter about pushing information to ticker history

Novorus Logging Moratorium and Stahlmark Smithing Prowess foreign office events are now tracked using the event arc system

balance: cultist murderer option now easier to access

FIXED: more instances of empty-handed traders

FIXED: alert for angering bandits appearing when no bandit witnessed your desecration of their foul tents

FIXED: bug in “Stahlmark Smithing Prowess” event where it failed to track how many iron bars you had made

FIXED: scripterror in rogue artist event

FIXED: scripterror in Rogue Stahlmarkian if rare conditions occur

FIXED: broken icon in alert for favour_redcoats

FIXED: broken fishperson job loop under certain circumstances

FIXED: math error in disturbance points that made them higher than intended

UI/UX

the building commands menu is now split into more subcategories

assignment beacons are now grayed out when their assignments are disabled

rewrote a number of building descriptions to make their usage more clear

foreign relation state changes now handled as FYI-style alerts

tooltips can now be anchored to screen position

added wrapped text overload constructor to cut down on illusion code lines

object tooltips now show how many of a thing are owned, show tags

character tooltips are now anchored to bottom right, and are starting to show useful information

upgraded some core building icons to be more visually distinct

camera tutorial now mentions that spacebar pauses the game

character tooltip info now visible in the work crew screen and the population list UI elements, because we all wanted them there in the first place

added Quality of Life ratings from 1 to 5 (& more info in the pipe)

added more functionality to the character tooltip (more to come): Will show more information about why a character is not doing something useful and what to do about it

Quality of Life attributes for characters are more closely attached to specific emotional states in order to make it easier to provide clear solution steps via the UI for a character’s state

added a little icon for whether characters are currently on-shift to the tooltip

population list window has been edited to show more information, the filters have been temporarily removed

FIXED: title of “aristocratic manor” command no longer says “A”

FIXED: typography on j and other characters

FIXED: tooltip info persists across save/load

FIXED: an issue where for initial pause tooltips for characters were broken

FIXED: Work crew panel now displays the name of a workshop/assigned zone if there is one (instead of “No Assignment”)

FIXED: workcrew UI for farms no longer forgets that a work crew is assigned to a farm unless they’re currently farming.

FIXED: some bad widget deletions causing Bad Things

FIXED: some memory handling issue with UI elements

Engine & Others

added ability to attach lights to static props (& tool support for this)

added lights to a number of existing modules

you can now build lampposts

horror corpses can now be destroyed by damage

steppe biome now uses lower hill generator

added more terrain softening between alpine clearing and temperate swamp

added new acceleration code for closest lambda queries (optimization!)

FIXED: combat music cues should only fire for combat involving your colonists

FIXED: depressingly complicated scene graph loading bug causing crashing on save games

FIXED: another, different, save game crash

FIXED: loading the save game you just saved causes colonists to re-appear twice in the colonists list

FIXED: large, complicated race condition

FIXED: game locks up suspending or closing a job where a job is being cancelled, but the FSM hasn’t picked it up yet

FIXED: weird crash loading save games where you have a beacon with an interactive object with no message receiver, and no I don’t know how this happens either but we handle it now

FIXED: crash when clicking on module button rapidly

Wish to peruse the full annotated changelog? Read it in the Development Report!

Have fun and let us know through our mysterious portal or forum if anything goes wrong.