Stationeers

The Farming Update Part II: Balancing & Bugs

Continuing to expand on last week's update, we've added some new features to how plants process light and made some quality of life changes to the plant tooltips. We've also focused on general big fixing.


Plant Light Changes



Sunlight and grow lights now both scale the amount of time the plant has received light for, based on their solar intensity. Sunny planets like Vulcan receive a 150% multiplier to time spent in light, while distant, cold planets like Mimas only receive 18% of the time spent in light. Plants grown solely from the sun on distant planets may become extremely stressed, and struggle to mature. Grow lights have been reduced to 80% intensity.



Fortunately, grow lights now cumulatively add light to plants in combination with the sun. Hydroponic setups with both exterior windows, and artificial lighting will often have an edge in meeting a plant's light requirements. Additionally, we've added the ability for plants to get an extra growth bonus for extra time spent in the light. Some of the longer growing plants, corn and pumpkins, have had their required darkness lowered, so you can give them extra time in the sunshine.

Keep in mind that plants still need a rest period out of light, and wont get growth bonuses when stressed from lack of rest. You may want to automate the process with solar sensors, timers, or just an old fashioned light switch.

The several plant entries have had descriptions updated in the Stationpedia, to point out the nuances of several plants, and give players an idea of what growing the crop may entail.


Plant Names



Plants can now be given custom names using the labeler. Additionally, when you use the labeler to give your planter a custom name that name will be passed on to the plants as well. This will help with organizing your farm and save getting your plants mixed up.


Localization



We've done a lot of work on getting more localization coverage. Work is continuing here but the changes have not yet been exposed. In the coming months we will be putting more effort in to this area, so watch this space.


Saving Bug Fixes



There was a number of nasty bugs around saving that was causing corrupted saves and resulted in some weird behaviour after loading them again. The Discord integration was sometimes causing games to fail to load, this is now being handled correctly so you can continue to load without Discord integration.

Some people were experiencing empty tanks, or rather missing thing atmospheres, after loading a game. We've implemented a temporary fix for this and are hunting down a permanent solution. If you are still experiencing this then please do report it.


Your support makes this possible



The major refactor has been a huge milestone for us and we think you can see the tremendous impact that it has had. Your support through bug reporting, suggestions, and direct involvement with our team on discord make a big difference.

If you like the progress we have made, please consider taking a moment to leave a positive review. This makes a great deal of difference to the project. We have worked hard on this project now for five years, and we feel confident the game has substantially improved from when we started. Many projects steer clear of the hard tasks, and we are proud to have taken them on.

Additionally, you can support us by purchasing the DLC we made to allow those who like the game to support us, and in return get something a little fun to continue to use in the game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2089290/Stationeers_Human_Cosmetics_Pack/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1038400/Stationeers_Zrilian_Species_Pack/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1038500/Stationeers_HEM_Droid_Species_Pack/

Change Log v0.2.3678.17897


  • Updated plant tooltips to be more compact and only convey verbose information when something is wrong
  • Improved stationpedia layout for plants that interact with multiple gasses.
  • Fixed trader throwing error when no comms motherboard is inserted into computer
  • Added Plants now can get extra sunlight per day, giving them a growth bonus, only if their required darkness time is met.
  • Added Plants now normalize their lit time to the strength of the light source. Growing plants on planets with low solar intensity will require more light time.
  • Added Plants can now cumulatively have the sun, and a single grow light applying light to them.
  • Changed The basic grow light to only provide light at 80% Intensity.
  • Reduced Corn and Pumpkin's minimum darkness, to allow them to gain larger growth bonuses from extra light.
  • Updated individual plants stationpedia entries to highlight design intent/differences.
  • Fixed stacker tool tip showing quantity twice
  • Added in some missing text in stationpedia and tutorials
  • Fixed Centrifuge sometimes throws error when exporting processed dirty ores.
  • Added more detailed exceptions within Asteroid.SetMineableRenderers() to try track down a bug
  • Fixed 5-way cable junctions reduced to 3 from 4 cables to be the same as 6-way junctions.
  • Fixed GameStrings key issue
  • Fixed Error when reading collectableGoods on modular rocket before it has been launched (will now return false).
  • Removed hard coded failure strings from tooltips into GameStrings
  • Fixed split stacks only going to the left hand. Split stacks will now go to any free hand or merge with a stackable in hand of the same type. If none is found the split stack will be dropped on the ground.
  • Moved success tooltip messages into append message method
  • Moved more tooltip strings into GameStrings for localisation
  • Made sorter filter scroll bar slightly wider
  • Fixed 'stormend' command not working correctly. Replaced 'stormbegin' and 'stormend' commands with 'storm start' and 'storm stop'. Stop command will now correctly stop the current storm.
  • Fixed Spelling error in Plant tooltip.
  • Fixed Instance where a save with a lower than expected number of serialized trader contacts would fail to load.
  • Fixed game string key double up
  • Added missing mushroom recipes
  • Removed obsolete class HelpTextDevice migrated to GameStrings
  • Moved more hard coded strings to GameStrings for tooltips
  • Fixed ArgumentOutOfRangeException thrown by Comms-motherboard when save contains erroneous trader contact data. Data will now be parsed correctly and erroneous data discarded.
  • Fixed NREs when clients plant plants
  • Fixed delete plants being called on client
  • Fixed labelling plants on clients bringing up labeller window on server.
  • Added Plant Genetic Analyser will now show the name of the plant that the sample came from.
  • Added Plants and seeds can now be given custom names with the labeller. When labelling a stack of plants all items in the stack will receive that name.
  • Added All planters can now be named with the labeller. Plants in the planters can be renamed by targeting the plants slot with the labeller.
  • Added Plants will retain custom names when planted and pass on custom names to harvested child plants and seeds.
  • Added Plants in a planter with a custom name will have the planters custom name appended to their custom name i.e PotatoGeneStock02_PlanterA
  • Added Stacked Plants will retain their custom names in the same way as they retain their genetics data.
  • Removed IsCustomName bool. It is more robust and performant to use !string.isNullOrEmpoty() instead.
  • Converted ConsoleWindow GameStrings to Localistaion2.GameString
  • Removed Thing overloads in GameString.AsString() to use the string casting at the high level to avoid excessive overloading or boxing
  • Fixed audio related NRE that sometimes occurs during loading save
  • Added cancel button to the 'this save is old' warning popup
  • Disallowed saving when game state is 'loading' and in a few cases were the directory may not have been established yet
  • Added partial fix for tanks being empty when starting a new game. Now, the game will be saved after several game ticks (instead of immediately) to let atmospherics settle
  • Potential fix for locking issue for cable networks while client is in join process. STAT-2875.
  • Re-ordered chutes in chute kit. New order is: straight, corner, window, junction, flipflop, valve, overflow, inlet, outlet
  • Rounded values on the plant genetics panel to make it easier to read
  • Fixed NRE RocketTankModules when loading game causing load failure. Fixes STAT-2862.
  • Fixed Chute digital Flip Flop Splitter Left is missing from building variants
  • Fixed issue with IC dropdown being covered by text area. Turned off raycast target on text area.
  • Removed deprecated incidents menu
  • Fixed formatting and changed text on the Laptop's Stationpedia page
  • Added further messages to plant tooltip to let players know when the plant is not yet mature or not yet seeding
  • Fixed game strings variable indexing causing issues with localisation in tool tips for plants
  • Removing mothership references in stackable
  • Fixed plants replenishing their fruit on loading save. Will now load with the correct number of fruit.
  • Fixed Colliders disabled on window shutter glass.
  • Changed multiple hardcoded strings for tooltips to GameStrings for localisation. Still many more to go.
  • Fixed Sun is not visible through window shutter when open.
  • Fixed Discord error that could cause save games to fail to load. Error is now handled correctly and game will continue to load without discord integration.
  • Fixed Seed bags get deleted when exported from silo.
  • Fixed Stacked cooked foods don't become decayed when put into silo.
  • Fixed Soups and cereal bars can now be stored in silos (they previously turned into decayed foods)
  • Fixed plant sampler battery slot trigger not allowing you to insert battery with single click
  • Fixed plant sampler display text staying visible when battery is removed
  • Fixed Recursive power networks will now blow fuses instead of a cable if a fuse is present on the cable network.
  • Fixed Potential fix for comms-motherboard throwing error when printed.