Update 0.5.2 Summary

Warning: This update breaks save-game compatibility with previous versions.

Here's a fairly major update for 0.5. It introduces a new farming system with new crops, more efficient food & water production and an improved AI. We'll go over those changes in details, but, for those who want a TL;DR here it is:

• Your survivors and the economy are more efficient at doing most tasks
• Farms produce more but require water and lighting (at least underground)
• Expeditions can be sent to recruit new survivors
• Bugs introduced with 0.5 should all be fixed now

Food production & Farming

This is the big new feature in this update. Simply put, food production is more efficient. Probably too much at the moment, as it still need balancing. Generally speaking recipes give more bang for your buck with a lesser time investment.

Additionally farms are no longer magical things. Plants will require water and (generally) lighting to stay alive. Your farmers will automatically supply the farms with purified water whenever necessary, and rain will also help. 



As this screenshot demonstrates, underground farms will require proper lighting for the plants to survive, unless you decide to grow our new edible mushrooms there. Those can't grow above ground and are awfully inefficient but don't require any lighting. We also added rice as a new crop, it requires a lot of water but also produces a lot of food.

A new water purification building has been added too (construction tech). It's way more efficient than using camp fires and doesn't require a survivor to work at the station for the work to be done.

Lettuce and lettuce related recipes have been removed and replaced by hops for beer production only. Speaking of alcohol, vodka has been introduced. Alcohol fixes the need for 'fun' but might render your survivors drunk for a few hours (slower, less likely to work).

Right now, we're producing way too much food and water, even with large bases. Which, I'm sure, is a nice change for many, but it's not going to last forever either. While it's not part of this update, pests and farm related events will be introduced later down the line.

We also have more changes planned for the food production, as we'll soon be introducing generic recipes based not on specific ingredients but on their category (for instance: meat + vegetable = medium meal) instead.

AI & Efficiency

It's only a few changes but it makes a world of difference. 

Firstly, assuming that a crafting station is adjacent to a storage building, and that said storage building accepts its production, anything built in the crafting station will be automatically put into the container. For instance, if you put a container accepting consumable items next to a water collector, the process will be entirely automated, the container will get automatically filled with dirty water.

Secondly, when disassembling/razing stuff, settlers will look for nearby similar and unclaimed jobs, massively reducing back & forth between the area being destroyed and your base in the process. They also regularly look around them for stuff dropped on the ground, no matter what they are currently doing, and will pick it up if they have the storage capacity.

There are a few other minor tweaks, but generally speaking much less time is being wasted by your survivors.

More Cool Stuff

Another much requested feature. It's still a bit experimental, but you can set expeditions to focus on rescuing other survivors. It will not guarantee that the expedition will find new survivors (especially if it's a short one) but with this focus, there's a 60% chance per successful search you'll find someone. 
You won't know anything about the rescued survivors until the expeditions is back home. When back, the same menu you get during recruitment event will appear, and you'll be allowed to review them before taking them in (or banishing them).

Also, you can (finally) click on a queued item in the crafting station menu to remove it from the list. No need to clear the whole list each time you need something removed anymore!

Full Changelog

• AI: Farmers will take care of plants, providing water
• AI: Factories (including water collectors) will auto drop their production in a container if they can find an appropriate one adjacent to them
• AI: Survivors will look for nearby "disassembling" jobs when done disassembling something (same we do for collecting stuff from the ground)
• AI: Tweaked "satisfy needs" AI logic (they will, sometimes, use vodka or beer to amuse themselves even if a card/pool table is built)
• AI: Settlers will (generally) pickup stuff from the ground if they are walking by those items while doing something else
• Balance: Water well and collector production increased significantly
• Content: Added water, light and location requirements to seeds/crops for farming purpose
• Content: Added rice farms and food production chain
• Content: Added mushroom farms and food production chain
• Content: Added water purification building (more efficient and hands off than other methods) in the construction tech
• Content: Removed lettuce & related recipes, replaced by common hop which is used exclusively for beer production
• Content: Added vodka and recipes (at a still). Vodka nullifies the need for fun, but will get someone drunk)
• Content: Expeditions can now look for new survivors to recruit!
• Engine: Another performance & stability pass
• Modding: Added ability to disable speech bubbles and mood handling in npc data files
• Modding: Building locations can use any item category as building materials (was previously limited to, well, materials)
• Modding: Crops/plants can grow into any item category instead of just ingredients (yes, you can mod in a bullet-growing farm)
• Modding: Ingredients are their own item type with specific properties
• UI: You can click on a crafting station's queued order to remove it (so you don't have to clear the whole list each time)
• UI: The Farm menu adds a lot of info about crops and the farm's health
• UI: Added overlay to see plant health
• UI: Renamed "Ethics" to "Work Ethics" for clarity
• UI: Pressing shift and a movement key will double camera speed
• UI: In the custom game menu, added tooltips with description over inventory items 
• Fixed: Zombies, animals and cars no longer get mood swings
• Fixed: Regression bug in 0.5.0 causing all survivors to look alike after loading a savegame
• Fixed: Regression bug in 0.5.1 allowing to place some structures over each other
• Fixed: Clicking on a survivor in an expedition (in the population menu) will teleport you to a fake map you're not supposed to access
• Fixed: Pathing issue related to the underground layer occasionally preventing people from reaching something in the opposite map layer
• Fixed: Potential crash tied to underground spider migration event
• Fixed: Region manager wouldn't count windows as walls causing walled off people not to notice they are walled off.
• Fixed: Changing layer while the game is paused wouldn't update wall or lighting data