Hello, it's Dot Matrix here again with another special bulletin. I have to put down my brushes and rollers, with which I have been redecorating the Fed2 Star office, in order to tell you what Bella's been doing to occupy her time in the run-up to Christmas.
NEW BUILD: RAILWAYS
Engineers can now lay tracks across their planets and build railways, to help move large cargoes as well as passengers - and at much faster speeds than the somewhat leisurely canals. This increases productivity in various sectors: each railway adds 1% to the efficiency of all resource, industrial and technology groups, up to a maximum of 5%. This efficiency change won't show up right away, however - you will have to wait till the next reset when efficiency is recalculated.
Railways can be built at resource and industrial level, but cease to have an effect at biological levels.
Railways will have another effect when the next build goes in, which is housing estates - you will need railways if you want to build more than the minimum number of estates. But I'll explain that in more detail once that build is available.
The command to build a railway is - guess what? - 'BUILD RAILWAY'.
Incidentally, the original plan was for railways not to be available until industrial level, but Bella decided that Engineers would enjoy having a trainset to play with for Christmas!
HOW EFFICIENT IS THAT?
If everything has gone to plan, you won't notice any effect from some of the work Bella has been doing recently. It should be completely invisible to you. Only if she messed up will you see any difference.
What she's been doing, is rewriting the code that handles planetary efficiency, to bring it in line with the way that the new code for population and disaffection works. This will make it a lot easier to put in new builds that affect efficiency.
If you do see anything strange in your efficiency figures, please email feedback@ibgames.net with a capture, and explain what you think the problem is.
Bear in mind that builds affecting efficiency will now only take effect from the next reset, when everything is recalculated. Over the next month, Bella is also going to make the population and disaffection builds work like that, too - the figures for your planet will be totted up every reset and that's the level they will stay at until the next reset.
Builds that add production points directly to a commodity, or commodity group, will still take effect immediately.
Well, that's it for this bulletin. I can get back to my redecorating now. Hazed's office is looking lovely! But the sparkling new paintwork on the walls is making the rather faded carpet look a bit sad, so I think I should take that up and replace it with something better. That means I have to move all her furniture out, which will probably take me the rest of the day, so it's just as well this was only a short bulletin!
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