Update 2 – Building the foundation
There’s just one week left until Adaptory’s second major update comes out, and I’m excited to finally start revealing what’s coming in the update. This is a huge update that needs three more posts to adequately preview everything that’s coming, and we’ll be posting these previews on the blog, on Discord, on Steam, and on all the socials.
In today’s post, I’d like to share some of the major new content you’ll get to play with in Adaptory Update 2!
Explorer expectations
Once your explorers have stopped merely surviving, they’ll want to start thriving. As you progress through the game and the research tree, explorers will gradually increase their expectations through four levels:
- No expectations, immediately after crash landing;
- Low expectations, once 10% of the research tree is completed;
- Medium expectations, once 30% of the research tree is completed, or the crashed ship has been investigated; and
- High expectations, once 60% of the research tree has been completed.
At low expectations or higher, explorers will become unhappy unless they have a personal bedroom (see below), and they may have a tantrum if they become too unhappy. At higher expectation levels, they’ll also start demanding specific personal touches to their bedroom, which are a combination of specific requirements from their traits, personality type, and backstory.
At the highest expectation level, explorers will want all of their bedroom requirements to be satisfied. It’s up to you to work out how to design and layout your explorers’ bedrooms to satisfy all of these requirements!
Rooms
Update 2 introduces the concept of rooms, which are enclosed areas of the world, each with a dedicated function. A room cannot be too big or too small, and the room must be surrounded by solid cells or other buildings. In Update 2, there are three room types:
- Bedrooms, containing a bed, which are assigned to a single explorer as a personal bedroom;
- Laboratories, containing a research desk, which hold all of the research equipment necessary to unlock advanced research; and
- Conservatories, containing a planter box, which improve the mood of every explorer that passes through.
Rooms are automatically created by the game when an enclosed area contains a particular building.
Some rooms have additional requirements that need to be satisfied (e.g. a conservatory needs at least three different
plant types in it). We’ve also added a new room overlay, accessible by pressing F4, which shows all of the
rooms in your world.
Bean bags
Update 2 includes a total of 21 new buildings that your explorers can unlock in the research tree and build – and the research tree has another six nodes to unlock, too.
One of these new buildings is the bean bag – finally, explorers can have a bit of a break and rest their weary feet! When an explorer has nothing to do, they’ll look for an unoccupied bean bag to sit on, which will improve their mood and reduce their stamina consumption.
We’ve also added buildable hanging plants and potted plants, which mostly just look nice. (They also give a mood buff to nearby nature-loving explorers.)
Deep freezes
If you’ve been in the unfortunate situation of an explorer running out of oxygen, you’ll know that the technology for revival (the cryochamber) is far down the research tree – but in the meantime, your dead explorer is just lying there on the ground, making everyone else upset.
Update 2 introduces the deep freeze building that can temporarily store dead explorers until revival technology is unlocked. It doesn’t require any power to use; all it needs is some ice. That said, let’s hope we don’t need to use it too much…
Faraday cages
So long, solar flares! Explorers can now build faraday cages to protect essential areas of their base from the effects of solar flares. Solar flares will not shut down any power generators or consumers in an area, as long as that area is completely surrounded by a faraday cage. They also cannot be built in the same cell as a wire, but explorers can build a wire bridges over them.
Shredders and constructors
The constructor is a brand new powered building that can construct complex parts and unique items, including some new items that we will need to get off of this planet. Constructors can create one item at a time, and require an explorer to operate.
The shredder is the unpowered evil twin of the constructor; explorers can use shredders to inefficiently pulverise objects and resources back into other resources. For example, basalt and glass can be smashed up into raw sand, and you can turn excess oxycans back into raw salt.
Advanced power buildings
All of these new buildings will increase the power demands of our base, so the research tree includes two new buildings to generate more power.
The advanced solar panel is an upgrade to the regular solar panel, that generates twice as much power for the same footprint as a basic solar panel, but requires glass in order to build.
And, the hydrogen generator is a powerful late-game power generator that generates a massive amount of power from hydrogen (which we can either obtain from the environment, or from our industrial processes), but it does consume nearby oxygen, and it exhausts steam into the environment that we’ll need to deal with.
We can also use the new power switch building to isolate different power networks. Explorers can turn the switch on and off manually, or we can automate the switch using the circuit network.
And what about temperature?
In the next preview post, we’ll introduce the “temperature” part of The Temperature Update. We’ll be sharing the post on the blog, on Discord, on Steam, and on all the socials – so make sure you’re following!
