Space colony people, may we have your attention please?

The age of diplomacy just kicked into Imagine Earth! Other corporations now have an attitude towards you. When you are being offensive they will find appropriate strategies to react to your doings.  Also there’s a mighty construct in this update for you as well: The Midras Extractor creates tornadoes and does terraforming.

Read your way down through all those good news to catch a glimpse of some future plans we have.

Thanks very much for being with us! If you do like the way we do things here please consider giving the game a thumps up on Steam. It would help as a lot!

Why not follow our brand new twitter account @SeriousBrothers?

TL;DR

• Diplomacy
• Midras Extractor
• Niter pumpkin seeds
• Planet Bonus Goals
• AI & Merchants
• Fixes & Improvements

Diplomacy

Did you always want to interact more with the colonies you share the planet with? Well we did ever since. Now the other corporations have a mood set in seven levels from being allies to enemies. They react to certain events that you trigger like stealing their land by building a tower or using a hacking tool against them.

As you can see they stopped trading stuff with us because I threw an asteroid on them. There reactions go down to aggressively taking my terrain and buildings.

Note that these are our first “diplomatic steps” and will definitely need some refinement and your feedback!

Midras Extractor

The Extractor is a high tech construct of the Midras. It absorbs the power of fallen asteroids to generate force fields. It can do rare condensation to turns rocks into gold. Technically it condenses all the small metal particles so they become harvestable. A second power generates a force field in the sky to create a small-scale air vortex in the earth’s atmosphere with an almost vertical axis of rotation – a tornado. Third it enables you to do terraforming.

For the next update we plan to build these and other temple structures with artifacts you can buy from the various races.

Nitro Pumpkin Seeds

Natives will sell pumpkin seeds now. You can use them to plant your own nitro-pumpkins whereever you like.

In addition they trade ideon treasure maps showing how much ideon is in the nearest ideon deposit. Of course, you will also find classic products like gaian energy containers and the universes most favorite meal drug “Spice” in their shop.

Planet Bonus Goals

The bonus competition missions in the campaign mode now have 5 goals which help to introduce the victory point systems. This will make it more of a challenge to reach full points in your game profile.

AI & Merchants

• The different AI fractions have individual item crafting preferences
• AI finally has trade demands for energy, food and goods
• AI actively buys resources for crafting tactical items
• AI pays more attention to its emission balance
• AI starts with less money because the where to rich!
• Merchants only offers rare resources and goods – no longer food and energy
• Merchants tries to offer things the player likely needs (e.g. for crafting)

Fixes & Improvements

• Nice new snowy mountains
• New construct: ski lodge for winter sports. Ahm no, just kiddin’! Time for spring to come…
• Titanium goal on Tuto had a problem that we fixed.
• Lithium goal on Lorian had an error regarding the amount of lithium that you were about to harvest.
• Laser rotation speed got faster now to shoot asteroids in time.
• Icon render order fixed.
• Fixed profile generation available colors.
• Fire spreads slower – we felt it was to dangerous.
• Building city center no longer costs extra money. The landing permission is enough.
• You can now destruct assimilator ruins. We wonder why nobody did complain, about this.

Future Constructs

During the holidays Jens scribbled down some ideas about the next buildings that will fill the build rings in of our game. Tell us which one feel most intriging to you or what other possible game features you would like to see. The 3 most original ideas in the comments of our blog will win a steam key for yourself or a friend: https://www.imagineearth.info/alpha-40/

Thanks for reading about Imagine Earth!
Martin & Jens

Fellow space colony managers,

we recently discovered a new planet – say hello to Thera. In addition, our world management system needed some adjustments. All building upgrades were rebalanced and the resource simulation was revised. And of course there is so much more…..

TL;DR

• New bonus mission on planet thera – a planet like earth
• New vegetation graphics
• Upgrade balancing
• Resource simulation revised
• Assimilators & Xrathul Harvester interaction with bombs
• New trailer voiceover
• Other improvements

Thera – a Planet Like Earth

The latest planet that you can unlock in the bonus galaxy is Thera. It might remind you of another planet you left long ago, right where you grew up before you joined the colonization business and started building a better future in space. Make sure that history wont repeat itself on this planet…

Organic Flora

We added some edge modells to forests so they look more organic and more round than triangle. As simply as this is said as astonishing it does look in the game.

Upgrade Balancing

All the upgrades in the game have been revisited and rebalanced. We mostly made them cheaper and more powerful to increase their strategic value.

Furthermore the visualization has been improved so you can see the most important numbers at a glimpse.

Resource Simulation

In order to make the upgrades more significant, we also had to adjust the complete resource simulation.

Let’s have a look at the most important change: The production and consumption values of all buildings are now per space minute instead of per space second.
For example the tax value of a district now represents what is collected within a full space minute. 1/60 of the amount will be added to your budget ervery space second.
If your colony makes a profit of +300€, it will take one space minute until the full amount is added to your budget. This equals +5€ per space second.

This allowed us to increase the production and consumption values of all buildings which makes them easier to read and compare.
Money related values have been increased by factor 10. Energy, food, goods and rare resources have been increased by factor 2-4. The same goes for emissions and field pollution.

In addition it allowed us to halve prices and money budget and to reduce the size of a resource cargo from from 1.000 to 100 units. These values are now easier to read and compare with the production as well.

Assimilators & Xrathul Harvester Interaction

These flying enemies are now attackable with ideon bombs and explosive devices, which will be thrown on them by your drones.
To do so you can simply hover and click the flying enemy unit and pick the item of your choice. Thisway you also get a context info about their motives and vulnerabilities.

New Trailer Voice Over

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=55&v=FtihRNHqwQA

As you can hear the game features and mechanics are now explained by a native speaker with a compelling voice. As soon as we find time to redo the intro/trailer we also want to have this voice for Lima, the leading character in the game.

More Stuff

• The inventory is now accessible through the tool ring for fields where it makes sense to use items. In addition you can open the construct ring with a right click any time.
• Tower upgrades are also constructable through the tool ring when you have bought the corresponding item from a trader.
• No distorting ringing sound for infos anymore.
• Joe’s 50k Sales Goal on Mission Joma is only triggered when Joe was not already fired by the boss… oups, that was a spoiler ;D
• On Planet Iqunox you have to craft medicine now instead of just selling medical substence harvested from corals.
• Rounos Native Quest now tells you to build towers to repress uprisings of angry natives.
• Mission Joma: We added a “Buy Scanner” goal to make more clear how to proceed in the mission.

Graphics

• The fieldmarker was redesigned to look better!
• Tons of forest models have been optimized and graphics reworked.
• Underwater build animation got fixed.
• Hospital icon fixed, pumpkin shadow fixed.
• Rooftop of the saw mill construct fixed.
• Palms bigger and bump map fixed.
• Reconstruct icon fixed.

Dear Space Colonists, our monthly update of Imagine Earth this time adds a background story frame to the campaign and a new additional vegetation set.

TL;DR

• Mushroom Vegetation
• Epic background story
• Resource Storage
• No More Fake AI on Rounos
• New Flashy Quest Icons
• Other improvements

Mushroom Vegetation

Maybe you where one of those who perceived our planets as a bit too normal and not very alien-like. We had the same feeling for some time and saw chance to try something new in terms of vegetation. The whole set of forests (8 bioms + 1 underwater) is now being replaced on two of the six campaign planets to make their themes more diversified. It also triggered us to do another set of vegetation besides trees and mushrooms. Could be giant ferns or totally alienated, glowing crystal plants. Any ideas?

Epic Background Story

We heard it from time to time and felt the same way. The campaign was lacking a bigger context for the story. We have added this now  in the form of cut scenes told in the campaign screen. This links all the missions to a big picture and a real goal that is followed by you and the other companies.

Resource Storage

A minimum of 10% goods will always be put into storage if you prioritize a certain resource. That keeps you from waiting for a resource package you wanted to store when the production value of the resource is low.

No More Fake AI on Rounos

On the Rounos mission we had a scripted enemy which could finally be replaced by our AI. In addition we have polished the mission on planet Rounos. There were serious balancing issues that are hopefully working out much better now.

New Flashy Quest Icons

You can recognize much easier when there are important events somewhere on the planet. Quest icons have pulsing markers around themselves. In addition these quests are arranged in an own line in the bookmark panel. You can jump to these Events simply by pressing TAB.

 New Features

• New resource warning icons
• Achieved goals will be shown and highlighted in cut scenes
• AI cares about food & goods diversity
• Traders will trade craftable Icons only occasionally
• Fires won’t spread so fast anymore

Fixed Bugs

• Forest had plus on themselves
• pollution effects were to high
• Improved pest and epidemic particle effects
• AI relied too much on oil platforms
• No AI enemies where spawning in competition mode
• Natives mood and goods usage
• Native camp model had reflected surfaces
• Fishery reduced its own productivity
• Game crashes with access denied folders

Dear Space Colonists, our monthly update of Imagine Earth this time focuses on improving the visualization of building productivity and quality of life for cities.

TL;DR

• Joma Extended & “Healing” for Temples
• Fusion Reactor
• Fire Station
• Money and Tax Balancing
• New UI for Details on Productivity and Quality of Life
• Other improvements

Joma Extended & “Healing” for Temples

It’s now possible to donate items and resources to other colonies. For now this has only relevance for the missions, but in the near future we will be working on a diplomacy system.

We have extended the Joma mission to make use of this feature with respect to the epidemics and Birons.  This gives you the chance to take a decision at one point that will have influence to a later part of the mission.

The cure spell that is now available in temples neutralizes pathogens that can pose a threat to more complex forms of life on site – in other words, you can use it to heal epidemics.

Fusion Reactor

This new building is introduced in the Rounos mission.

The fusion reactor generates thermonuclear energy of nuclear fusion. Lithium is needed as a raw material, which can be extracted from asteroids on most planets. There is only relatively little radioactive waste and the reaction can be aborted safely at any time.

The “divertors” upgrade improves binding of impurities from the plasma and reduce maintenance and disposal costs. The “reactor extension” upgrade expands the reactor so that additional energy can be produced.

This building most likely will need some additional balancing, since it’s the first time a building consumed rare resources.

Fire Station

The fire station is an upgrade for city districts and the logistics center. It ensures that fires in the vicinity are automatically extinguished by a drone. In addition, the probability of forest and building fires is halved.

Money and Tax Balancing

Currently you always have loads of money in the long term. We are trying to improve the balancing of this a bit. In the first step we have increased the start budget and decreased tax income. At the same time we have increased the tax bonus you receive when your people have a high quality of life.

New UI for Details on Productivity and Quality of Life

Over the course of the last years Imagine Earth has become a quite complex game. A part of this complexity is how productivity is influenced by nearby buildings and local factors like ground fertility.

With this update we are introducing a new info panel that is shown when a building is clicked. It sums up the productivity and lists all the influencing factors and their strength. This will make it a lot easier for you to understand what is going on and how to increase the production output of your colony.

The second part of this is how the quality of life in cities is influenced. A high quality of life will give you a tax bonus and a low quality will decrease your income.

Buildings like the park district, health district and campus district increase the quality of life in surrounding districts. Other factors will decrease it. The new info panel lists the details on this, so you always know what’s going on.

Finally the former building info panel in the bottom left of the UI is replaced with a minimal version that shows the building’s / object’s name for the selected field and its production value / remaining resources.

Other improvements

• You can open the build ring by right-clicking on any field now
• Added explanations for epidemics
• Bookmark panel no longer “clicks through”
• Research and development panels no longer change the planet zoom level
• Visualization for items received during the mission
• Changed influence area visualization for cannons, shield, fire stations and more
• Fixed city car animation problems

Dear Space Colonists, our (almost) monthly update of Imagine Earth this time focuses on a remake of the Joma mission that introduces new buildings, items, threats and a new race – the Birons.

TL;DR

• Birons on Joma
• Trade with other colonies
• Warehouse level 2
• Epidemics, medicine and health district
• Chemical plant
• Meteor shower (new threat)
• Worker drones
• Seed bombs
• New AI features and other improvements

Birons on Joma

The Joma mission was last mission from the old days of Imagine Earth. We decided to rework it and add some new goals and story to it, to make it more interesting. All the new features mentioned below are introduced in the mission.

The Birons are a new race that are introduced on Joma and are the first contact with another colony on a planet in the course of the campaign. They build small colonies and are focused on producing resources and items and trade these things.

Trade with other colonies

Other colonies are now ready to trade overproduced resources, harvested rare resources and items with you. They pay less than the merchant would, but are willing to trade any time.

Warehouse level 2

The warehouse can now be upgraded to level 2, after this has been unlocked in the research system. It doubles the storage for rare resources and adds a second harvester drone to the warehouse.

Epidemics, medicine and health district

Epidemics are a new threat that can occur anytime. The probability is increased by local pollution, high temperatures and buildings like the cattle breeding or chemical plant and mushroom forests.

You can cure the epidemic with the new item “Medicine”. It can either be crafted using chemicals and corals or bought from the trader.

The new health district improves the quality of life of the surrounding districts. In addition, the spread of epidemics is prevented and the probability of an outbreak is halved.

It’s medical lab doubles population growth in surrounding districts and the university hospital increases the radius of the health center in which epidemics are prevented, the quality of life is improved and medical laboratory affects population growth.

Chemical plant

The chemical plant produces all the chemicals needed in society. Production is increased by gas deposits as well as neighboring chemical plants. Inconspicuous, for example, for medicine and fertilizer production.

Fiber-reinforced plastic reduces the maintenance cost and risk of an incident by using fiber-reinforced plastic instead of metal. This avoids corrosion. Laboratory optimizes the production process and reduces quality-related production losses.

Meteor shower (new threat)

Meteor showers are a new force of nature. They come down as a burst of 3 to 6 small meteors that cause about 40% damage to normal buildings.

Single meteors can be shot by laser and pulse cannons or stopped by a city center or frontier tower with shield generator.

Worker drones

All basic maintenance and incident works are now done by worker drones. This includes shipping the construction site for a new building, relocating existing buildings, repairing damaged buildings, extinguishing fires and dropping items like explosive device or seed bomb.

To make sure you always have enough worker drones available, the logistics center comes with an additional drone.

Seed bombs

The seed bomb is a new item that grows the optimal forest on any field. This field can be located within or near your colony. The item can be crafted using nitrokirlide and timber.

New AI features and other improvements

• New outro soundtrack
• Mouse-wheel zoom now also rotates the planet towards a selected field
• Research: Frontier tower level 2
• Fixed quickload/-save (F4 and F5)
• Ocean now starts to rise at 25% global warming (previously at 50%)
• Colorize buildings by their type (navigation menu)
• New animation for constructed buildings
• Improved ideon crystal graphic
• AI: Use cannon and shield to defend against Xrathul harvesters
• AI: Craft items if needed or resources available
• AI: Buy tech license if needed

Dear Space Colonists. We have released our monthly update of Imagine Earth. In the next days we will also update the Demo version to the latest state.

TL;DR

• Atmospheric scattering shader
• Hover cars add some life to cities
• More variety for assimilator battles
• Reworked and extended mission on Bora
• Outro
• Temple sacrifice logic changed
• Loads of detail improvements

Atmospheric Scattering Shader

This release is foremost a beauty and game atmosphere update.

We have implemented a new atmospheric scattering shader that puts every planet into a unique light color situation.

Hover Cars

Hover cars fly through the skyscraper canyons of your cities and show how full districts are. They bring some visual life into the so far empty city districts and the whole colony environment at all

This is only the beginning – we plan to have cars driving to all of the supply buildings as well.

Bora Mission & Assimilator

It got totally reworked to make the end boss more understandable and assailable. The robotic entity is now attackable not only with astroid strikes but also with gaian fire, volcano eruptions from the temple and bombs as well.

The companions are constantly giving you tips how to attack the assimilators.

In addition we put a lot of work into rounding up the storytelling of the mission. Plus there is now a proper outro sequence thanking you for your great efforts to make it this far 😉

Temple Changes

We also had to redesign how temples work. Spells are now available from the beginning as you have to sacrifice anyway to get the construct loaded with gaian energy.

You can now queue sacrifices and load up to four tons of gifts into it that will slowly be turned into gaia one after the other. This makes spells much more accessible and the temples therefor much more use- and powerful.

More Improvements

• Tutorial now points out the hotkeys and control hint panel that you activate by pressing F1
• Build shortcuts are working again: Q,W,E,A,D,Y,X,C will directly take you into the several building categories
• Fixed overlapping button icons in sandbox mode
• Stoniness will no longer be seen in the navigation view options as it is a thing that is changing the landscape only visually and indirectly influences the fertility of a field.
• Corals and seegras will no longer burn.
• You can again save your self-made planets from the sandbox mode.
• No more sounds looping when game is minimized
• Merchant was given more importance by letting him sell landing permits and development licenses exclusively
• Midras: Item and resource availability and food demand have been optimized in their visualization.
• Illuminati now sell gaian containers
• Claiming land costs less next to towers
• Cannons on frontier towers will no longer shoot each other
• Fixed AI behavior in case of climate change
• Smart styled mailing list form: http://eepurl.com/3w7iH
• Mission, info and housing icons reworked
• Fixed company score calculation
• Fishing boats float on the surface of the ocean again
• Editor: special field types can be overwritten again

Links

• Daily Mars – Video Preview

We wrapped up the most important changes of release 33 and 34 in a devlog clip on Youtube again.

TL;DR

• Electronic Employee is now called Assimilator and comes with a floating drone
• Laser und Pulse Cannon can now both be used against asteroids, Xrathul harvesters and Assimilator drones
• Ideon Bomb and Explosive Device can be used in new ways – even against the Assimilator
• Blow up mountains to get more rare resources
• New campaign bonus mission on ice planet Iqunox
• Wake up sleeping volcanoes with ideon bombs
• Added second main objective to Tuto mission
• Electronics Factory

Assimilator Drone

This first point is partly a spoiler. So jump right over it, if you haven’t played the Bora mission yet.

As you know the Bora mission introduces a threat that is kind of an end boss for the campaign. This “Assimilator” (previously “Electronic Employee”) spreads its cables from field to field to reach your City Center in order to assimilate it.

The assimilator now comes with a floating drone monstrosity that increases it’s territory field by field. You can use frontier towers with laser or pulse cannons to defend against it.

Be careful though – the assimilator drone will fight back with a small laser cannon and thus might destroy your defense. And your cannons will only allow you to stop the assimilator from expanding. Meanwhile costing money and your precious attention.

There are several ways to get rid of it. Use asteroid strikes or volcano eruptions. Or expand your territory and apply explosive devices or an ideon bomb.

Laser and Pulse Cannon

The laser and pulse cannon now attack all enemies and dangers that approach you. We have change the values for fire and reload duration and damage and defined how each cannon interacts with the different targets.

E.g. the laser will do triple damage to asteroids and thus destroy it with one shot – just because it is optimized for this purpose.

Towers no longer take fire when being damaged and health is over 25%. You can repair them and they go on shooting.

Ideon Bomb and Explosive Device

We have put some work into improving our blasting items. Both are now dropped by one of the drones starting from the City Center.

The Explosive Device allows the immediate blasting of mountains, rocks, buildings and ruins in your area and on all fields directly adjacent to it – the later one is especially helpful to defend yourself against Assimilator.

The Ideon Bomb has multiple times the effect of an explosive device on an area of four fields. It also disintegrates big mountains and wakes up sleeping volcanoes.

Blasting single field and big mountains will leave the fields with rocks that may contain the rare resources gold and titanium.

Ice Planet Iqunox & Sleeping Volcanoes

We have added the third bonus mission to our campaign.

Since the outbreak of the pan-galactic plaque in this sector of the Udoxia Galaxy the demand for an antidote has skyrocketed.

On planet Iqunox which was known only for its cold and miserable living conditions, giant coral deposits have been discovered.

You will be one of three contractors who are send to extract the coral antidote for the U.S.U.

Sleeping volcanoes are spread all over the planet. You can use Ideon bombs to wake them up and increase the temperate on surrounding fields a few degrees – enough to get rid of the snow and grow food more effectively.

The Iqunox mission also adds the “Emission balance” as a new victory point type: It starts tracking from 20:00 onward. The leader needs to surpass others by at least 40.

Rare Resource Goal on Tuto

Planetary colonization is foremost about making a backup of humanity and populating new worlds. But there is another important goal: Exploiting resources!

To reflect this point we have added a second main objective to the first mission on planet Tuto. It introduces all the recently added gameplay mechanisms for rare resource harvesting, item crafting and blasting mountains.

Electronics Factory

The Electronics Factory replaces the existing Mall. It produces complex electronics and needs trained staff. For that reason it is more efficient next to city parts and research districts. It features “Chemical Filters” and “Entertainment Devices” as upgrades.

The Factory has been renamed to Machine Factory to make it easier distinguishable.

Other

• Fixed a hovering problem of the bookmark panel
• Storage upgrades for warehouse have been removed from the research system
• Removed asteroid explosion graphic bugs on start of freeplay and competition matches
• Show asteroids in bookmark panel (top right of the screen)
• Reduced price for asteroid strikes to 65.000€