Hi! This weekly report explains the new trading mechanisms of the Merchant and the new unit Space port.

Merchant Trading

As introduced in last week’s Friday Report, the resource system now distinguishes between up to 8 resource types for every of the 3 resource categories energy, food and goods.

In addition to special items like research budget and landing permits (right part of the screenshot) all resource types will be available for trading. For each  resource a market price is calculated based on the amount that was bought and sold during the game.

When the merchant arrives at your planet he will have a set of  resources available that are in demand. The bar on the left side of the trade ring shows the storage of the merchant which is limited. This means that you can sell only a few resource packages if you don’t buy anything from the merchant.

We plan to give the AI trading abilities,  too – so the merchant becomes a shared resource. First come, first served!

Space port

The space port is a new building that gives you the ability to construct a rocket. With this rocket you can  sell up to 5 packages to a distant world (1000 resources each).  This will offer a much better price than the merchant, but you will have to build a new rocket or every 5 packages you sell.

Thanks for following us! We wish you and your families the absolute best for the new year ahead.

Jens & Martin

Welcome to our 30th Friday Report!
This week we have been working on:

• a diversified resource system
• population resource demands
• global resource storage

All the things described in this post will be released with alpha 18 in a few weeks.

Resource system

So far our resource system knew only money and the three resources energy, food and goods. Adding more depth to this aspect of the game is something we have been dicussing for months and now the time has come.

The simulation of Imagine Earth now distinguishes between the following types of food: Grain, vegetables, salad, water, fish and meat. The same goes for energy and goods.

So what does this really change about the way you play Imagine Earth?

Population resource demands

The demand for resource variety depends on the level of your city districts. The people living in a level 1 district are satisfied with any type of food and goods. A level 2 district will need at least 2 types of food and 2 types of goods to be really happy. A level 3 district will need 3 types (see screenshot below) and so on.

In detail each type must have at least a 20% share of the districts consumption. So a greenhouse could produce enough salad to meet this criteria for up to 5 level 2 districts.

Global resource storage

The storage of resources now differentiates between the different resource types, too. You can buy every type of food – even those you aren’t producing – and thisway meet the needs of your people. As the screenshot shows you can also prioritize the storage of a specific resource. This might for example be a resource you want to make sure is available when the demand of your people rises.

Trading

Trading resource will become more important and complex with the new resource system. More details on this next week.

Good news for those who where questioning the retro 90s look of Imagine Earth. Yes, not all buildings are state of the art and some will get a makeup upgrade already with the next release in a few days. Finally the cities look like futuristic stuff you would definitely build while you are colonizing space.

We should also see some redesigned farms and get the space port running where you can build rockets and fill them with the resources you produced to sell them on the intergalatic markets…

Colorized Building Lights

The night lights of building now are colorized in each player’s color. Together with the border line every colony can now easily be associated with it’s owner. The cover picture shows an example of the result.

Smooth Shadows

The shadows really needed a filtering to become more smooth. Dealing with graphic stuff like this always takes a lot of time to make the result really nice. We hope you like it!

New Sandbox Feature

The sandbox editor  now comes with add and remove buttons for every ground, deco and building type. As shown in the screenshot below you can select the wanted ground type and use the plus button to assign it to another random field. This makes it very easy to distribute fossils, gold, forests and other stuff.

Bugfix Release Alpha 16.1

• Fixed a serious bug that lead to a game crash in the highscore list
• Fixed a bug that didn’t correctly initialize a missing steam client on startup
• Added achievements “Magni” and “Scientist”

With the release of Alpha 16 coming nearer we would like to give you a short info on what to expect from it content- and story-wise.

Magni

As you probably have already realized the new campaign planet will be called Magni. It will be added in between Rounos and Bora and continues the story after Lima and Twostone’s decision to form their own company. This is obviously a difficult task and to make some money you will start your next mission as a freelancer for the IEA (interstellar environment agency).

The Xrathul

The Xrathul are a locust like race that use ships called Harvester to harvest resource from planets. They slowly float from field to field grabbing and destroying what they find on their way. A part of your mission on Magni will be to protect yourself and others from them.

More on this next week with the release of Alpha 16. Releasing it only 3 weeks after Alpha 15 brings us back to the schedule of releasing new content at the beginning of each month 🙂

The image above shows a Harvester. They are built and sent by a race called Locust. They harvest planetary resources like forest, gold and also cities. More on this next week.

No Upgrade Development

The new research system is much more focused on single tools and upgrades. Because of this it feels like doing the same thing twice over to still have to develop them. So we decided to have a try with a small change: The number of development licenses you receive during the missions will be reduced and you will only have to license buildings with them. If an upgrade of a licensed building is researched you can immediately use it.

In addition the development user interface received a little makeover:

Borders Reworked

Currently the borders are standing upright like laser walls. Because of this it’s sometimes hard to see them looking top-down. We reworked them and put them onto the planet. Now they are much easier to see and better looking:

Welcome to the latest friday report! We’re back from taking a summer break and working hard on the research system revolution. Due to holidays the whole thing is delaying a bit more but we got lots of exciting news on latest units and constructs. I almost don’t know where to start… but remember all these are ideas in development that will most likely change and we’re desperately looking for more feedback on them.

New Trade Dynamics

So far your overproduced resources go straight into the trash as long as you haven’t developed the warehouse already. A still very limited possibility to store resources for hard times. One that we definitely want to expand.

Space Ports

In the future we want to advance the whole trade system to enable you selling the different sorts of resources each at their individually varying price level to other colonies but futher more into space with your own space ships. When we do that you will be able to use your city center ships to deliver a package of certain goods package into space But that will keep it occupied for a very long time. To improve your sales oportunities you can build the space port. At an extra cost you can construct one way rockets to stuff in the resource packages that are to be sold and to send them off to the intergalactic markets.
This way of trading makes you independent from other business partners but the rocket construction lower the profit rate.

The Harvesters

These creatures have developed a completely different life style than other known lifeforms of this galaxy. They hover into the lower orbit of a planet with their giant ships and extract all resources from on or under the ground with advanced tractor beam technology. The appearance of harvesters is a devasteting event for a living environment and a thread for its inhabitants. As long as you have no advanced defence technology you can only try to buy your colony out of their interest by delivering the desired resources yourself. Infact when a harvester is slowly turning towards your colony and approaches your cities for a good loot you can motivate them to change course if you sell them your resources at zero cost. But that will only make someone elses problem for a while…

Stone Quarry

There’s another new unit that was long overdue. The stone quarry produces build material from rocks. Yes they are finally no longer useless. After all that time these rocks turn from being an annoying disruption into an actual resource. Reaping by tool will no longer only cost your money and time it’s an early and limited way to gather a sort of goods. Of course the quarry will mine rocks slower and constantly. produce more building material at lower costs. you can increase its effectivity by placing it next to stone deposits.

New research options

Additionally when you advance your societies transportation abilities in the research field mobility you can also relocate stones from one place to another to save the build material for later but set free the building land they block or just take them to a quarry elsewhere. You will also be able to research blasts which way you can get rid of rocks and gold deposits the fastest way but that involves heavy losses.

Is everybody ready for the next friday report?! This week we focused on the new research system.

The first version is shown in the picture above. The whole research is now grouped in currently 11 categories like extraction, city building and agriculture. Within these categories you can research between 2 and 4 chunks that each cost a single research fund. Some chunks only consist of researching a new tool (like mining) other chunks research a set of 2 or 3 upgrades.

We still have to put some work into this to make sure it works well with the existing missions and also with new content.

And next week we have to talk about theses guys who You will meet on the next campaign planet we are also currently working on…