Early Access Launch v0.1 - The Moon, Colony Supplies, & Celestial Logistics

Fire up your smelters, and triple-check your manifests, Factory Default: Build, Trade, Repeat v0.1 is out in Early Access!

Greetings!

Phase One of several begins right now! After an unfortunate delay, the game is now available on Steam. I thank you so much for the support, comments, and feedback. It is really important in a game like this.

I won’t waste your time, let’s talk about what is new!

📌Highlights:

• Ultima Mundi Phase 5 is here!

Pass the final General Assembly vote to expand your empire into the solar system, starting with a mining colony on The Moon.

• New Mechanic: Colony Supply Units (CSUs)

  • Build multi-component supply drops on Earth to construct and maintain your off-world mining colonies. If your Earth supply lines fail, your colonies will cannibalize themselves to survive. Fun!

• Celestial Logistics

  • Establish interplanetary trade routes using the new Cargo Drops and Drop Ports.

• Production Halting Shortages

  • Highly regulated space materials cannot be traded on the market. If you run out, your factories bleed money with zero output.

• QoL Improvements

  • All building types now copy/paste-able, expanded Library, re-organized Build Menu, and smarter Trade Manifests.

Here is the Launch Trailer:

Play video

Here is a quick video covering the major changes:

Play video

Thank you to the creators that took a look at Factory Default recently, your feedback has been very helpful!

Play video

Play video

Play video

and several more!

FULL PATCH NOTES

STORY - Ultima Mundi Phase 5 Complete

Players can now complete Ultima Mundi Phase 5 - "The Moon"

Succeed in passing the hardest and final General Assembly vote of the game, and you will be granted limited facilities to celestial bodies around the solar system. We have permission to build anywhere we like with the stipulation that we are only allowed to live and MINE. We can harvest raw Regolith and Mélange, and bring it back to Earth for refinement. No production is allowed away from Earth.

Sadly, we can't simply start hopping from planet to planet, as we don't quite have the technology to do so. The Moon will serve as a test of our abilities, and provide the much needed Anorthosite required to filter the metallic dust on Mars' surface. We can expect Mars to hold the linchpin needed to move on to the next planet after that, Venus.

NEW MECHANIC - Colony Supply Units (CSUs)

We've already gotten permission to build whatever we like wherever we like in space. This is good news for the player's influence wallet, which is not needed for construction in space. Instead we will use "Colony Supply Units" which are a specialized collection of items and resources needed to support life on various planets and moons. We need the Lunar CSU to build on the moon, we need the Martian CSU to build on Mars, etc.

• Manufacturing: CSUs can only be constructed on Ultima Mundi using Uncle Ian's specialized factories (Unlocked sequentially via story phases.) He provides the labor and the orbital logistics, you supply the materials.

• Recipes: Each CSU type will require:

  • Colony Infrastructure (I-V) and Colony Provisions (I-V): A new sub-recipe unit that consists of 3 to 5 items that assist with construction or rations on planets and moons. Comes in 5 tiers for each type.

  • A Lander, Rovers, Space Suits
  • Some type of Power Generation and Fuel/Cooling
  • A linchpin item that can only be constructed using a production chain that originates from previously unlocked planets and moons.

• Upkeep: Mining colonies require CSUs to be constructed, as well as a daily use of 0.01 CSUs per day per mine. (Example: 25 mining colonies on the moon = 0.25 CSU use per day). Think of it as supplies for maintenance, and food to keep your workers fed. Don't worry about getting the CSU's to the planet or moon. Thanks to the Space Elevator, Ultima Mundi and each planet share inventory. A CSU generated in Ultima Mundi can be used as "fuel" for the mining colonies the next day.

• Cannibalization: If you happen to run out of CSUs to feed your mining colonies, the central hub will decommission the last mine constructed, and harvest the available CSUs. If this happens, you can bet there will be a news article about it.

NEW ITEMS:

• Lunar CSU

• Colony Infrastructure (I)

• Colony Provisions (I)

• Anorthosite

• Static Dust Scrubber - Needed for getting to Mars, but no use currently.

NEW BUILDINGS:

• Central Hub: This is the starting building on each planet and moon that is constructed once you complete their respective phase to unlock. This building cannot be destroyed, but is self-sufficient so you don't have to maintain it with CSUs like the mining colonies. It is also where all the mined Regolith and Mélange is transported and maintained. In addition, it is the only place you can launch Cargo Drops to send to Earth.

• Mining Colony: This is where the Regolith and Mélange is mined. They are constructed using money and CSUs of the specified planet or moon type. This building also requires daily supplies for maintenance and rations. Mined materials are automatically transported to the Central Hub.
• Drop Ports: This is the receiving building you can build anywhere you want on Earth. This is where you can have your Regolith and Mélange sent from any planet or moon. This building cannot send Cargo Drops, only receive them. It also requires researching "Aerospace Logistics" to build.

• Regolith Refinery - This is the building that can refine your raw Regolith and Mélange into various materials. Up to 4 outputs. One of which will be the resource needed to construct your linchpin resource for your next CSU type. Unlocked with research "Regolith Volatilization". In the case of "Moon Regolith", we get "Anorthosite", which is needed to construct the "Static Dust Scrubber" which we need for the "Martian CSU".

NEW LOGISTICS - Celestial Travel Times:

An interesting problem I faced with this new method of transport is I couldn't rely on the old system at all. With the old system, I simply use a navigation mesh to draw the path it is going to take, and then present to the player an estimated travel time. We know the distance, and we know the speed, we get the travel time. Since the planets and moons in the game are not actually thousands of miles from Earth, I had to do a bit of fakery to make it work. I based everything on the moon. I figure 3 days to get from the Moon to Earth is logical, so I made the system travel at that speed.

Alright, so how about Mars? Well in the game scene I have all the planets and moons in a line, just outside the skybox of each other so you will never see them. This means if I use the same speed for the Mars as I do for the moon, it would take 6 days. Well, that's just logically silly, and I can't just reduce the speed based on the pretend distance otherwise take-off and landing would look worse and worse the farther "distant" the planet was. I want that part to be consistent.

So, long story short, I have cargo drops that do some triggers.

1. Spawn, launch, and head to Earth.
2. Wait just outside the skybox while it "travels". (It doesn't actually wait, it despawns, and respawns when it is time.)
3. The day before it is set to arrive, it spawns outside the skybox and "above" the tile that it is set to land on, and touches down. This actually makes the future "speed" upgrades in the future easier to implement.

So here is the breakdown of how long it takes to get from various planets and moons: Celestial Travel Times (To Earth):

• The Moon: 3 Days
• Mars: 15 Days
• Venus: 10 Days
• Mercury: 12 Days
• Jupiter: 60 Days (Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto)
• Saturn: 120 Days (Titan, and Enceladus)
• Uranus: 250 Days (Titania)
• Neptune: 400 Days (Triton)
• The Sun: 15 Days

As I am sure you can see, travel times are not linear with distance. My logic here, and bear with me as this is not how it would work in real life, is that further distance allows for more acceleration. In real life you would set your speed and basically coast to your destination. The purist in me has no problem asking the player to wait 15 years for a delivery from Neptune, but perhaps sacrifices must be made for the sake of game design. (Also note that these are the initial travel times, and will be made much faster through the two speed upgrades that will come in later versions of the game.)

NEW STATUS - "Blocked” Items:

Different from “Restricted”. “Blocked” status items cannot be traded because no one could possibly have made or have use of it. These are exclusively items that are either mined from or derived from celestial material. (Regolith, refined regolith, items made with that regolith, etc.) 

Buildings will shut down if they don't have the blocked item in the country's storage. You'll have a news article pop, and the building itself will show "Supply Shortage" instead of it's usual production sprite.

NEW MECHANIC - “Fired”:

Added a "Lose" condition. If you have at least $3B dollars in outstanding loans, have $-1B in the bank, and own less than 50% of your company, you will be fired as CEO.

💡UI & QOL CHANGES:

• Completely overhauled the Save/Load architecture to support Cloud Saves, and be 100% backward compatible going forward, as well as heavily fortified against data corruption.
• Trade Buildings, Power Plants, Research Labs, and EIU Buildings are now copy/paste-able.

  • Each had their own reason for not being copy/paste-able before, but ultimately those reasons were either easy to fix, or were needlessly limiting to the player.

• I removed the Ultima Mundi Objectives from the Contracts Menu, and gave them their own menu and gui button. This is also where the CSU factories are now located as well.

• I raised the maximum recipe input count from 10 to 20. I don't plan on getting near to 20, and anything over 10 will be reserved for the Colony Supply Units only!
• I shrunk the toggle buttons in the bottom bar, just so it looks a little less intimidating and so that it is clear to players that you don't have to interact with them to play the game.
• Manifest set up will no longer allow you to create a "Wait for Full Load" trade route if the source country doesn't have enough storage space to fulfill that request. Change the load size to below that threshold in order to complete the manifest.

• Added Categories for the categories in the Library, a category-ception if you will, and alphabetized the items within.
• Smoothed the vertical jitter the camera had when zooming in close to the globe.
• Added "Bottom" and "Top" labels to the market prices in the library so it's clearer what is being shown.
• Added "Mass Profile" library to entries. There are 9 unit sizes, and their size is important when it comes to knowing how much will fit on a transport vehicle. Now you don't have to guess.
• In the tile info panel, adjusting employee stats now updates recipes and expenses immediately. instead of waiting for the next day to tick.
• Added a warning when you attempt to sell shares that would give you less than 50% stake in your company.
• Added an Early Access welcome message encouraging feedback and bug reports.

• Removed the "Recipe Visualizer" - It's too busy to be helpful on complicated recipes, and anything simple doesn't need it.
• Changed "World" label when no countries were selected to "Earth"
• The Library should now also properly remember the last item that you were looking at so closing the library wont clear what you were last looking at.
• I moved some buildings around a tiny bit in the build menu.

  • Nuclear Plant was moved out of Factories, and into Refineries

  • Machine Shop and Packaging Plant were moved out of Refineries and into Factories
• Adjusted some of Uncle Ian's dialogue to read better, be more helpful, and actually fit on the screen so you can see everything he says without having to scroll.
• Main menu now will not show the empty Ultima Mundi site instead of the complete island, space elevator, and space station.
• (Performance) Updated the storage panel and country resource generation panel to be much smarter when changing countries.
• Adjusted Credits page layout.
• Added "Tile Copied" message to the eyedropper tool, as well as a sound chime so that the player knows the copying happened properly. This text shows up as green
• Added some errors to the paint tool so the player knows why painting a tile failed. Errors include "Nothing Copied", "Tile Occupied", "Terrain Mismatch", and "Country Mismatch".
• Changed Tutorial error messages to appear in yellow instead of red, just to differentiate them from regular error messages.
• Added some more explanation to different areas of the tutorial: Contracts, Managers, and Focus Mode.
• "Generate Contracts" button in the Supplier Contract Menu will now disable when you don't have enough influence.
• The Upgrade button in the tile info panel will disable if you can not afford to perform the upgrade.
• Changed default ambient volume to 10% (Background sounds when you have tile info open.)
• Ambient building sounds now only play once instead of looping the entire time you are in the building screen.
• Both Refineries and Factories will use the "Factory" ambient sound. The Refinery audio was too harsh.
• Added a item name label to the Auction Win panel.
• Added a "No Production Assigned" sprite above buildings that are built without any production assigned to it.
• Reduced maximum company name from 100 characters to 4
• Reduced maximum character name from 50 characters to 16
• Reduced maximum family name from 50 characters to 16
• Auction bid buttons now will disable if you don't have enough money to cover the bid.
• Added some button SFX to Auctions menu. (bids, opening, and sending)
• General Assembly “Hold Vote” button will be disabled unless you have enough influence to initiate a vote.
• Max save filename length is now 35 characters.
• Removed the console command window as I had phased it out, and changed default pause-time key to “QuoteLeft” so that the pause-time key would be right next to the normal play speed buttons.
• Added a brief explanation for the math at the bottom of the building info menu.
• Added labels to the top and bottom 5 so that you don't have to hover over the flags with your mouse (if you don't know the flags by heart)
• Added a "Worldwide Prices" panel to the library so that you can see the price of an item across every market instead of just the top and bottom 5.

• Changed all flag buttons within the library to go to that market's library entry instead of moving the camera to that location and closing the library. If you you want to move the camera there, you have the option from that market's library entry.
• (Performance) Queued the recipe population in the Library so that they all aren't trying to generate on the same frame. This will only be noticeable on items with lots of recipes. (Like Fertilizer)

📝IN-GAME GUIDE:

• \ Items > Regolith
• \ Items > Refined Regolith
• \ Items > Linchpin Products
• \ Items > Colony Caches
• \ Items > Colony Supply Units
• \ Production Buildings > Regolith Refinery
• \ Trade Buildings > Drop Port
• \ Transport Methods > Cargo Drop
• \ Planets & Moons
• \ Planets & Moons > Buildings
• \ Planets & Moons > CSU Usage
• \ Planets & Moons > The Moon
• \ Ultima Mundi Project > Colony Supply Unit Factories
• \ Library > Recipe Visualizer

⚖️BALANCE CHANGES:

• Heavily reduced the amount of most of the Ultima Mundi resource requirements. The quantity of items remains the same, just how much of each item was reduced. Don't worry, these requirements are still fairly challenging.
• "Environmental Stewardship" is now unlocked at the start of a new game. This allows players to build "Protected Forests" if they want to keep their EIU down early game. (Otherwise you take a massive hit to your EIU right off the bat unless you put in the research points.)
• Changed mountain tiles to allow Warehouses, Research Lab, Refineries, and Power Plants to be built on them.
• Changed off-shore tiles to allow for Wind Power Plants.
• Changed CPU unit from z to x
• Changed RAM unit from y to x
• Adjusted auction generation to give a wider range in the value of the contents.
• Reduced Phase 0 Basalt fulfillment from 5,000,000,000 tons to 1,000,000,000 tons.
• Removed "Bone" from the game. Nothing produces it, and nothing uses it.
• Added a market roll for every item in every market in the game when a new game is made. This so that every item has at least one market willing to pay extra for it. So no matter what supply chain you follow, you will have SOMEWHERE to sell it. Wealthier markets have a higher chance of fluxing up, and poorer markets have a higher chance of fluxing down. Markets with a fertility in that resource will only flux down. The number of markets fluxed is determined by the option selected when making a new game.

🛠️BUG FIXES:

• Fixed the "Wait For A Full Load" not waiting and shooting out a shipment immediately after making a trade route.
• Fixed Russia and the United States having 4 over-lapping off-shore tiles.
• Fixed a tooltip for contracted supplies showing a 35% markup.
• Fixed issue with build menu sometimes not showing price of building in currently selected country.
• Fixed issue where auctions could have partial units, leading to player being unable to properly sell them.
• Fixed issue with labs still paying scientists and engineers after demolishing the building.
• Got rid of all the random sounds that would happen while the game was loading. 
• (Performance) Fixed news articles all trying to pop on the same frame, causing lag spikes if there are enough of them.
• Fixed border issue with "Micronesian Union".
• Fixed icon mismatch between Avocado and Asparagus.
• Fixed issue when clicking on storage item, you could get an error regarding building.
• Fixed issue where camera would zoom when trying to scroll through storage panel.
• Fixed issue where property tax was not properly calculated on empty land and un-assigned production buildings.
• Fixed news menu "exit" button behaving oddly.
• Fixed library remembering what page you were on last even after loading a different game, or starting a new one.
• Fixed maintenance on the building info screen appearing as a positive number, and not calculating into the total expenses.
• Fixed "None" managers being hirable in buildings that have no resource selected.
• Fixed notification bubbles appearing under adjacent buttons.
• Fixed some Guide typos.
• Fixed tutorial soft-lock that could happen if you exited out of a tile info screen before hiring a manager or adjusting employee quantity.
• Fixes some labels that did not allow for longer company names, and would mess up the UI.
• Fixed issue where you might start a new game and be stuck on an empty news screen.
• Fixed issue with Türkiye not being searchable with "Tur"
• Fixed issue when collecting contracts that caused other contracts to disappear.
• Fixed issue with planets and moons appearing in the auction delivery dropdown.
• Fixed ability to accidently assign controls to the same input.
• Fixed some minor UI bugs.
• Gifting to representatives will now refresh if your ability to pay changes while you have the option open.
• In the production assignment screen, items that require research will enable the moment you have enough research points.
• Fixed "x6" speed being listed as "x8" in the control settings.
• Fixed UI bug on building info panel when building was max level.
• Fixed Trade Route menu popping up even if you were not clicking on a related UI element.
• Adjusted Indonesia, Iran, and Thailand’s minimum wage. Some rounding issues were causing those markets to have less than 100% efficiency on farms.
• Fixed several small UI issues.
• Fixed upgrading warehouses within trade screen not updating max storage in the storage panel the next day.
• Fixed a typo in the tutorial.
• Fixed issue with items that are not allowed to be traded showing up with market values.
• Fixed being able to hire managers for non-tradable items. Allowing them to be sold for $0.
• Fixed Non-Tradeable items showing blank market data, it will now be completely gone.
• Fixed issue with tutorial contracts being decline-able after accepting the first one.
• Fixed the delay between changing Ultima Mundi sub-phases and when each item would refresh.
• Fixed issue with stars sometimes unnecessarily stopping their rotation.

EARLY ACCESS NOTE:

If you happen to reach the point where you have unlocked The Moon, and the objectives for Mars are presented to you, you will notice an item being requested called "Progress Blocking Item". This is to keep you from getting to Mars just yet, as it is not complete. (You can technically get past it by editing your save file, but doing so will just give you access to a broken feature.)

In the meantime, the other objectives are open to be completed, and you will need Colony Infrastructure (I) and Colony Provisions (I) for the rest of the game. So it doesn't hurt to stock up on those!

FUTURE: v0.2 - Mars:

On the roadmap for the next major update is Mining on Mars, and “The Climate Crisis”

Again, thank you for following along as MicroProse and I prepared for this first step. There is a feedback button in the main/pause menu of the game if you want to formally report any bugs. There is also the Factory Default Discord where you can discuss bugs or features. You can also utilize the discussion boards on Steam if you wish. I will try to respond wherever I see feedback.

Speaking of feedback, if you happen to purchase the game, I appreciate it very much, and I know those on the fence would love to hear what you think. Ratings matter a great deal.

Until next time,

-Chett Fitzgerald

Check out Factory Default on Discord!