The next content update is fast approaching and there are several major features coming. Let's dive right in. [h3]Moving Stations and Factories[/h3] Final Factory is getting a major gameplay overhaul with the new moving stations feature. This will allow players to attach rockets to any station, and then move or land that station anywhere on the map. Players will be able to move mining outposts: [img]https://i.imgur.com/nKeOiVe.gif[/img] Send out combat and exploration missions: [img]https://i.imgur.com/DOOiflT.gif[/img] And use their movable stations to transport cargo to different parts of their factory. Crucial to this feature is the ability to schedule and queue up movement and landing commands with different conditions, similar to haulers (or trains in Factorio). This will allow the full automation of exploration, clearing out enemies, and transporting goods with what is essentially fully customizable space ships. We're also planning on a blueprint placement structure which will allow for the automated placement of blueprints integrated with the moving stations functionality. Which means you will be able to automate the growth of your factory like a true Von Neumann probe. We're stoked to see what players do with this feature when .16 releases to playtesters in the next few weeks. [h3]New Artifacts[/h3] We have a ton of new artifacts planned that should increase the variety of unique builds across play sessions. The Tesla Artifact delivers AOE wireless power to any nearby structure, allowing for remote power in an area. Currently, its delivers a fixed amount of power to every station its in range of, which encourages players to cram as many stations as they can near the artifact. [img] https://i.imgur.com/hH3UHaG.gif[/img] Additionally we have implemented the Singularity Cargo Artifact, which has the extremely overpowered ability of sharing it's large inventory with all other Singularity Cargo Artifact's around the map. This gives effectively instant delivery of your goods of choice anywhere you have one of these bad boys. There's many other artifacts planned: connector speed increasers, rocket adapter boosters, and more... [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//43547551/5ac8a78878624ff3dee279b1079b1d5cfaab7179.png[/img] [h3]Recipe Rebalancing[/h3] We're taking a new approach to recipe balancing. We want to smooth out the early game and make it more approachable. Many early recipes will be simplified, and we are reducing the variety of ore you'll need to build common structures across the board. This should make malls easier to think about and build, and make the early game curve more comfortable. That said, we plan to ramp up complexity significantly for later game to satisfy the desires of hardcore automation players. [h3]Sound Effects[/h3] We hired a professional sound designer and have a host of new sound effects that will be added to .16! [h3]Performance Improvements and the Unity Entities Release[/h3] We've made vast performance improvements to all areas of the game. Players should notice new game FPS dramatically increase, as well as in large maps. For those familiar with Unity DOTS, we've sped up our time on the main thread significantly by converting most of our systems to ISystems and burst compiling the crap out of everything. We also got the Unity devs to make significant performance improvements to the Entity Command Buffer disposal logic. Expect to see the game's multi-threaded performance crank up as the main thread has more space to schedule jobs. We've also upgraded our Entities package to use the long awaited officially released version! That's it for the .16 preview. We think these changes, and some changes yet to be revealed, players will find a fresh, deep automation experience. A new playtesting wave will soon begin for .16, so make sure to check out the discord's FAQ to sign up for it! https://discord.gg/finalfactory