Final Factory Rebirth Continued

Engineers,

I said to expect another big patch earlier this weekend, and here it is. Since the last post we've put out eight more builds (93 to 100), and a lot of what I listed under Coming Next is already in: the radial hotbar for Steam Deck, the Railgun, map markers that scale with zoom, and your own bots building your stuff first.

The story and tutorial are fully narrated now, and beating the game ends with a cinematic: your first Singularity Vessel falls into the black hole while the narrator reads the finale. Enemy camps also come back: new ones can settle near your factory over time, and raids now mix ship types and grow with your factory, up to 100 ships. Everything is below.

Highlights

• Victory cinematic: your first Singularity Vessel to leave the Dark Star Gate gets a cinematic into the black hole with the narrator's finale, then the Victory panel

• New Railgun: a 2x3 large gun that fires a charged orange slug every 2 seconds. A hit pulls the enemies around the target onto the gun, its small blast does 15% of the hit, and it does double damage to buildings. Comes with Railgun Slug ammo (crafted in the Combat tab) and Railgun Damage 1 to 4 research

• Story and narration: every story and tutorial line is spoken, with subtitles that follow phrase by phrase, and there are new lines for your first Dyson platform and for beating the game

• Steam Deck radial hotbar: hold R3, aim the left stick, let go (Settings > Interface > Hotbar style)

• Every item that rides a belt has its own model now instead of the orange orb, and dark ones like the Mind Extractor are brighter

• New objective marker: it locks onto its target, or points to it from the screen edge with the distance

Gameplay and Combat

• Enemy raids mix ship types and grow with your factory, up to 100 ships

• New enemy camps keep clear of every part of a big factory

• The Attack Frequency setting now changes how often camps raid again: Relentless raids 2.5 times as often as Standard, Hardcore 3 times

• Enemies react to being shot again: a hit from a Laser Turret, Plasma Bolt, Obliterator disc, Krillo or Railgun pulls the enemies around it onto the shooter

• The black hole pulls in and destroys you and your fleet again

• Your mining laser gets 2.5x the ore from iron asteroids

• Frenzy has a cast range: past it the cursor ring turns red and shows Out of range. Inside it, Frenzy reaches far cast points

• A fleet ability with no ship ready says "No ships ready for this ability"

• Your idle fleet fills in from beside your ship again instead of sitting in a ring with an empty middle

• Laser Turret, Defense Platform and Exploration Center tooltips show their range

• A Comet Catcher's red zone is exactly what a comet destroys: a cone, narrow at the catcher and wider outward. A caught comet destroys everything with any part in its path, and catchers side by side no longer destroy each other. The zones show on hover or when held, not in Alt view

• The Battery is a 2x1 plug-in like the Solar Panel. Batteries in older saves are cut to 2x1 and keep their connections

• Dyson Energy Logistics now needs Dyson Spheres instead of Mega Structures

• A blueprint is built by its placer's bots first, and the nearest tower wins across chunk borders

• Construction bots bringing cargo to a full inventory follow you and say why they wait

• Hover an unbuilt blueprint piece and press R to rotate it

• Free Build crafts without ingredients and starts with an empty inventory, and Custom games have an Instant Craft option

• Inventory Boxes and dead bodies have a Take All button

• Ctrl+right click on a hotbar slot queues up to 5, as many as you can afford

• A new hotbar has Atomic Printer, Assembler and Ship Assembler on 6 to 8

• In the demo, techs the demo doesn't include carry a padlock

Tutorial

• New Game has one Tutorial switch: on plays the tutorial, off plays none. No more detailed tutorial. With a better story, better QOL, better UI, I found that only one tutorial is needed.

• The tutorial now covers mining iron ore, silica and AI circuits, Mass Drivers and the research station

• Steps wait for their card to be on screen, so something you did earlier no longer skips one unseen. Each step arrives in order: its narration, then its card, then its arrow

• Every key a step names shows your own binding, and craft buttons and slots get a crawling orange border

• Research steps highlight the first tech you can start on the way, and finish once you close the Technology screen so the next line doesn't play over it

• The WASD step needs all four directions, the connector, mass driver and inserter steps complete when done, and you end with enough research for Asteroid Science

• Tips say which key opens the crafting panel, name the right crafting tab, and say to craft the solar panel and connector, then select them. Destroy and connector tips are new

• The objectives card fades out when the narrator starts the next step, a finished card has a new animation, objective controls show in pink with controller icons in their own colours, and the card shows over the Technology screen only during the tutorial

• Subtitles keep going if their window is hidden, and "mining structure" is now Mining Station everywhere

Research and Map

• The Research button sits under the selected tech and also queues its missing prerequisites

• Selecting a tech lights up its whole prerequisite chain and what it unlocks, and Research, Add to Queue and Stop show in its details and in the tree

• The research bar in the top-left fills as research progresses, with the amount written in it

• Map markers shrink as you zoom out, all icons are one size, and Add Marker places first, then asks for a name

• Double-click a map marker to rename it or change its icon. A marker can have no name and show just its icon

• The Map Controls buttons are a plain row at the top of the map, with one hint line per click under them

• Factory Information has a Structures Placed stat, and it and the Load screen show the game's difficulty preset

Logistics and Mobile Stations

• Mass driver beams pulse toward the receiver while you hover or select a driver in that chain. A driver that sends nowhere says why in its panel

• The station controls (Move, Land, Copy, Deconstruct, Hide panels) sit next to the abilities row

• Ordering a station to Land shows a blue landing hologram where it'll land until it's down

• A flying station shows cyan chevrons to where it's headed while it's hovered or selected

• A moving station shows what cargo it burns as fuel, and how fast

• A copied Command Core carries its station's name and route

• Dragging a stop below the last one in a station's stop list moves it

• Cargo barge routes end only where a barge can dock

• Less frame time with many mobile stations

Interface

• The Blueprints window resizes and remembers its size and place

• A copy, cut or deconstruct box shows what it holds

• On desktop, a building's windows first open together around the middle of the screen. Windows you've dragged stay put

• New games start with the camera closer to your ship

• Sort groups your bag by category again, and it's now an auto-sort switch: turn it off to arrange by hand

• The craft queue groups the same item into one icon with a count

• Pasting a copied empty recipe clears a building's recipe

• The mouse wheel over the minimap and HUD zooms the world

• Saves, blueprints, hotbars and settings now live in one UserData folder

• The objectives card draws under every panel, its header sits closer to it, and the "Too far away" hint sits just above Station Info

• The Station strip keeps one size, and "Production Progress" fits on one line

• German and other long languages fit in Player Fleet, Mining Station, Map Controls and Information

• A mod that fails to load says why

Steam Deck and Controllers

• New official layout: Hand Action on L5, a light right pad tap clicks, View is the map and Menu is Esc

• Held R1/L1 and the left stick scroll long lists fast

• Smoother frame rate in big factories

• Station Info stays just above the abilities and the building hover card above the minimap

• Button hints follow a layout switched mid-game, and the rotate hint stays off your ship

• The player inventory opens only for buildings that have one, and Ship Yard rows keep their Requested column

• A stuck Ctrl or left click is let go after the menu or the Steam overlay

Multiplayer

• Players mining the same obelisk fill one shared bar

• Rejoining while Steam is offline brings back your own player, not a new empty one

• Hitting an enemy pulls the enemies around it onto the shooter for every player, even right after someone joins

• Frenzy works with Bats from a Ship Yard or Defense Platform placed during play, for the host and for clients

• A player joining starts at the same camera distance as a new game

Fixes

• A big field of solar panels no longer freezes the game when it's built, or the save after

• After a respawn your refilled fleet is no longer deleted 3 seconds later

• Ships at the edge of a flying fleet no longer vanish

• Unbuilt buildings no longer take items from inserters, belts or barges

• Belt items reach the middle of a corner before turning

• A ship cut apart no longer blocks a landing zone queue for good

• Bat and Knight Docks no longer link straight to a station, which could crash the game

• Comet fragments get no slot diamonds and no station connections

• Title music no longer goes quiet after two minutes, and 50% volume is really 50%

• Build sounds play only for buildings you can see, and a deleted station's mining bots go quiet

• The big map has no black block at the fog's edge, and Escape closes a window over the map before the map

• A pasted landing zone shows its ship where it really lands, and Alt-view item icons no longer cover your ship

• Stacked Inventory Boxes and Ancient Treasures can be taken again, by the host too

• The Player Inventory no longer opens against the left edge of the screen

• A Land given to a station parked on the ground keeps its destination marker

• Copy, cut and deconstruct work while riding a station, and hovering a fast flying station's buildings no longer flickers

• A blueprint with a recipe shows only that recipe's slots

• After a right click cancels a blueprint, mining needs a fresh right click

• The hand-mining bar stays up while you hold right click

• A click started on a button no longer lands in the world

• A save made while mining a Luminae Obelisk loads with no mining in progress, and the obelisk beam no longer ends in a flat cut at full zoom-out

• The mining station's dotted line follows the station in your hand

• The +N item popup draws over your ship again, and the Map Controls hint is back inside its blue box

• "Research Bonus" on the hover card is no longer cut off

Still in the works

• Native Linux builds

• Better modding support

• Full logistics request

• More combat options

• More research

• Better UI

• More QOL

Thanks for all the reports and feedback, keep them coming.

/Slims