ALPHA 42C NOW ON STEAM EXPERIMENTAL BRANCH

I can confirm both steak and iron are working properly. Manliest build ever.

 

I've been playing 42 early access via steam, how does one get to these experimental branches?

 

How to opt in to the Experimental Branch:

1) Right-click 'Clockwork Empires' in your Steam Library,
2) Select 'Properties', go to the 'Betas' tab.
3) In the drop down menu (entitled 'Select the beta you would like to opt into:'), choose 'experimental -'

The client will update itself, or you can Verify Integrity of Game Cache in the Local Files tab. You can switch back to the stable branch the same way. Be warned saved games will tend not to work between branches, and stuff in the experimental branch is not guaranteed to function perfectly.

 

Thank you. I'll give it a shot. I tend to start new games every couple of days anyhow so losing my save isn't an issue.

 

It seems like "Clear Stumps" might have a problem. I don't have the shovel icon appear over it when I try to clear stumps. I see it in the jobs menu, but no one gets assigned to it.

 

Thanks for such rapid updates - amazing

The Explore marker still seems to be ignored as a command. Only way to get people to check our new areas is to blindly find something to hunt or forage

 

You don't need a naturalist to explore, regular colonists and soldiers will respond to the beacon. However, I have observed that Naturalist crews are usually chosen first for explore jobs.

 

They have changed the "Explore" so that it only a function for the naturalist. I have confirmed this in a conversation with one of the devs on the Steam forum.

Originally posted byslquick:

How do we explore the immediate starting area? One of the maps populated the drop location in the middle of a dense forest of trees while another did not have much of a flat area to build. With not being able to use my workers or troops to explore I could not locate a suitable location to start building. This would mean that we have to keep starting a new game until we find a map where the original drop/start area has all the right setup.

dbaumgart [developer]

You raise a fair point!

(In the short term, you can create spurious assignments out in the fog of war then cancel them to get people to go there - and/or use the military rally button, thought that's a bit awkward.)

Part of the problem with the explore tool is that it encourages micromanagement of individuals to the point of possible exploitability, which we definitely want to avoid. Will have to think about where to go with this. May roll back the requirement for a naturalist to do the explore job, but ... we're going to have to have a design discussion about how to meet both the needs to explore around your starting location to start the game off AND to give naturalists a unique and important role in exploration, somehow.

 

Then something's broken because the first thing I ever do when I start a new colony is explore the black space, and the colonists have responded. As of 42C.

 

Indeed. A naturalist will wander as it is - although seems to ignore requests to examine specific nodes still.

The explore marker was for regular colonists and is probably better that way.

 

I really like the new day/night lighting. very nice!
One thing with this build. Colonists are getting stuck at the stockpile a fair bit. It seems like they are waiting to stack a resource that has not been delivered to the stockpile yet.

 

I just forage a random small space out in the distance if I need to clear fog of war. Using the "explore" function is a bit of a waste of a good walk, imo.

 

The work schedule filters don't persist after save/load.

 

Small frustrations with minerals: the mineral discovery alert zooms to the naturalist rather than the beacon, so being a couple of seconds slow to click it doesn't help if it's in a forest. Second, the small beacons get lost too easily since they hide behind trees and are visually the same as really points and flatten job markers; could we try having the unexplored banner change its icon to be the ore discovered, at least until a building/module is put over it?

 

Even when the colonists have absolutely nothing else to do, they don't get assigned the clear stumps job. The icon in the field also does not show. It seems the clear terrain commands in general are acting funny.

 

I think the system for hidden minerals as it stands now needs an overhaul in general. Just a thought that poped into my mind (may not be right for this game), maybe some form of mineral overlay view that you can toggle on/off view via the naturalists workshop or something. Mostly I would like to solve the clutter of all the map markers when you aren't going to use the mineral (building on top, it's yet another clay deposit, etc). Something similar to the cities skylines resource overlay might be good. Again just a thought.

 

Also, module movement is still pretty buggy. I think this happened when I moved a module as it was beginning to be build? not sure.

 

I'm running into issues with my metalworks not smelting anymore. I've tried assigning a new crew, clearing the queue, and rebuilding the modules, but they never want to smelt again.

There's also a handful of animals that my military has killed that they never go back to butcher, even though I've tried the butcher command. I've cleared and re-enabled the hunting jobs, but they won't go back and butcher. Even the new military group I've created and enabled hunting on won't do it. Newer kills are hit or miss on butchering.