@Dev- I've got new games to play so I may come back to this game once it gets more developed, but I'd like to leave one comment behind: this game doesn't feel idle enough. The individual upgrades for each building is doing much more harm than good imo. There's significant benefits to staying active and individually upgrading buildings, and it becomes more and more tedious when my map gets really big. I believe it's extremely important for games like these to let players just run the game for several hours without losing anything, or at least not too much. I don't think you were aiming for a game for players to be active for hours on end to see how big their empire gets, and then just stop playing. I'm pretty sure I've outlasted most people and it hasn't even been a week. As a comparison, Reactor Idle is keeping me playing for 2 months even while I've been pretty busy.
I'm loving the tunnels! Would love to see more unique bonuses(direct or indirect) from post-glass buildings. @wombat that's what I first thought about emitters, but you'll quickly change your mind when roads and cables cost in the trillions.
I think this game is good the way it is, but I think it can be even better if roads were free. Your main worry with free roads was that nobody would bother with roadless chains...how about giving big bonuses for roadless chains? Like 3x production for an Iron Foundry directly linked to Charcoal, and 9x production for an Iron Foundry directly linked to both Charcoal AND Iron Ore.
After messing around with all the post-glass buildings, I'm just not sure if it's worth it other than emitters. Either way, I think the fact that I have to think about it is a problem in and of itself since it's just math, and it's not particularly something that's enjoyable to do. For example, to figure out if and when water plants are worth it, I gotta: Calculate the amount of energy required to make sand to make glass to make water plants, and then compare it with the amount of energy it takes to make boards/stone/coal to upgrade the iron mine/iron foundry/charcoal pile/stone quarry/coal quarry to make more steel. That's a lot of mathing that I'm not inclined to do. Emitters are a good representation of what all post-glass products should be imo---producing something that is completely different from anything that's already available pre-glass. It's very easy to see if and when emitters are worth it, and requires almost no mathing to figure it out.
Does over-the-horizon radar do the exact same thing as outposts? The costs keep scaling with outposts and it's always been far easier for me to expand with outposts so I never really got the chance to try it out.
It worked! My charcoals are working now. My coal quarry is strange...it'll be working for a little bit, do something completely unrelated to the area (like 5 screens away), come back, and then it's not working again.
https://gyazo.com/f24a8da597cce63684d42129ceb80445 Yea I've tried rebuilding and reconnecting. In both of these cases the charcoal works for the top and doesn't work for the right side. Even if I remove the charcoal from the top side, the right side still won't work.
https://gyazo.com/b62fd8fb287c570a9a4a9d8e104f8148 In this picture, the charcoal on top of the woodcutter hut is pulling the wood just fine, while the charcoal on the right is not. The woodcutter hut has waaaaay more than enough production to handle both.
https://gyazo.com/ce40a4cdf843e05f38b3c0b10b74551f Similarly, there isn't any priority for roadless sources of the same type. In this picture, the iron ore to the left and bottom is at 0%, presumably because it's taking all the iron from the top when it's already connected to a road.
There is a priority for some cases, but not for this one. It's kinda undefined behaviour - iron mine from the top can't predict that foundry already have a connection to other mines. Not now at least.
As for two other your pictures - they should work. You can try to sell and build again something that doesn't work(or a building next to it) as it supposed to, to flush buffers and recalculate routes. It could help. I'm constantly working on flow of resource, but I know it's not a perfect yet.
https://gyazo.com/75ba42b691d5a9328523a2aee48c1e31
I made a roadless iron chain, but it's not using the adjacent coal quarry. It's just pulling the coal from the road instead. It's using the iron from the Iron Foundry just fine.
@Dev I'm not entirely sure what you mean by roadless chains since there aren't any other alternatives. The only thing I have that's not connected to roads are windmill plants in the mountains and completely land-locked spaces with a storage inside...both of which I'll use anyways even if roads were completely free.
Check "help" section, there a picture of working steel foundry with directly connected supplies - one piece of road\storage per 6 factories. And you can pick a levels of building to reach 100% efficiency of each of those factories.
It may also be nice if any post-concrete products can be transported by means other than roads, like maybe industrial highways. If the opportunity cost of sand and glass buildings taking up valuable road-connected space is removed, then I'd be able to see some use in post-concrete buildings AND all this empty space that I have currently.
Great game, nice to see constant updates.
One gripe I have so far is there's no reason whatsoever to go for anything concrete and higher currently. The production cycle is energy->sand/water->concrete->more energy. You're literally just making more energy to make more concrete and that's it. Adding oil/plastic/solar panel is the same thing...just adding extra steps to make more energy at an oddly less efficient cost than good ol' windmills.
Maybe if we could make something like gasoline out of crude oil that makes everything else more effective. The only things we can make out of concrete+ buildings right now are extremely inefficient energy buildings, extremely inefficient steelworks, and not worth it at all emitters.
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Edit: I've just tuned priorities a bit. Not it should be more smart in some of these cases, your isolated charcoals should be green now.