Clockwork Empires October Update: Munitions, Madness, and M...uh...improved AI.

News from the frontier! In the never ending battle to bring order and civilization to the barbaric new world, it is sometimes necessary to blow up a small portion of said new world. That's right- landmines are the newest tool to add to your arsenal in Clockwork Empires. Invading fishpersons? Not if the landmines have something to say about it. Diabolical cultist plot? Meet Mr. landmines. Gigantic rampaging beetles? Oh, you better believe that's a landmine.

Gaslamp Games have added a lot more than landmines since their last monthly update- but let's be honest, who cares about ensuring that colonists don't idly chit-chat with bloodthirsty murderers, or cultists building shrines and holding Eldritch Transformation rituals when there's landmines about! Well, here's a brief summary of the less explosive changes to this month's big update:

• Guns now require bullets in order to work
• Improved combat AI makes sure soldiers respond to alarms quicker
• More modules added to kitchens
• Renovations re-enabled for buildings
• Balancing cultists- certain tasks and rituals require the cult to have a certain level of power and madness in order to function
• Gave fishpeople ability to attack walls, respond to landmines
• Updated UI, fixed typos, added more descriptions

You can get the full list of updates and patches after the jump and at Gaslamp's Devlog. If this is your first time hearing about Clockwork Empires and you want to hear more about it, you should check out our preview, and take a gander at this brilliant Early Access title on Steam.

FROM HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL MINISTRY – The latest news from the frontiers of the Clockwork Empire is that Progress continues to expand at a rapid rate. A flurry of News of Substantial Significance has emerged from the front lines of the Clockwork Empire, foremost being that Her Majesty's Army is now employing sturdily made explosives in an effort to continue to secure the border against barbaric enemies, new and ancient. Yes, lads, Landmines! Coupled with the new state-of-the-art Ammunition System, those pesky Ancient Beings Summoned from Beyond don't stand a chance! Her Majesty's loyal colonists continue to Impress and Succeed at the forefront of technology in the name of Progress and Industry, huzzah!

Additionally, reports from Our Great Army detail new and impressive combat techniques, though the Minister reminds all loyal Bureaucrats that they should not speak to postulants or members of any MURDER CULT. This will Not Be Tolerated. The Minster also mentioned to be cautious of the armoured Giant Beetles, as they, along with other Giant Beasts, are wild in nature and pose a threat to the good colonists of the Clockwork Empire if disturbed.

Yes, Life on the Frontier grows more challenging each day even as New Solutions and Enhancements are made on the hour, ever-furthering the Development and Progress of the Clockwork Empire.

Each week the Empire makes new advancements, breakthroughs, and Purges that shall assist and enhance our Colonization Efforts, so be sure to follow our Weekly Development Reports. All hail the Clockwork Empire!

A thorough listing of each new Advancement can be explored at www.clockworkempires.com or on the Steam forums once the patch is officially live today: http://store.steampowered.com/app/224740/. Clockwork Empires is available now for

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(Full changelog revision 31 -> revision 32)

Major Gameplay Changes

•         Added a new building module placement system (and re-enabled renovation)
•         Added an ammunition system (and landmines!)
•         Improved combat AI

These are the big three we came up with, though we expect through playing the game you'll discover a lot of little things that make playing the game easier (and at the same time, perhaps, more challenging).

Characters

•         FIXED: buried corpses will no longer upset people
•         FIXED: consume_food hooked up properly
•         FIXED: colonists will no longer have conversations with cultist murderers
•         Made upsetting things in general slightly more maddening
•         spruced up some placeholder death descriptions
•         FIXED: fleeing from the corpses of murderers
•         hunting requires bullets; hunters will acquire & use bullets; civilians will drop bullets when not hunting
•         bullet amount now displayed in civilian text paragraph
•         cleaned up glitches on pickup and drop ammo animations
•         FIXED food memories weren't working correctly
•         balance: made alarm range almost exactly flee range (so you don't get people running from fishpeople without raising alarm)
•         balance: a first friend is easy to make, every subsequent friends requires double the positive interactions for friendship
•         items held by characters are dropped when they die
•         FIXED carried bodies are dropped when people are killed
•         characters create alarm waypoint via "Raise Alarm" job when a "hostile_entity" is nearby. There's only ever one alarm beacon per hostile_entity ever.
•         made "Eat Food" more important to hungry people (by a lot)

Military/Combat

•         Conscription button now says "conscript unit" or "retire unit" and shows appropriate image depending on context.
•         assembling Gabions no longer requires a shovel (so soldiers will not drop their weapons to assemble gabions)
•         balance: Assembling Gabions will never be prioritized over fighting
•         Soldiers will now run to pick up their weapon in all cases
•         "Military Training" will encourage soldiers to value fighting more
•         Gabions and crops now have hitpoints
•         FIXED: ai_damage was double inherited, leading to all kinds of problems (notably, doubled damage in combat)
•         added an ammunition system
•         ammo crates hold 100 bullets, remaining bullets displayed in tooltip
•         characters can hold up to 20 bullets, bullets held displayed in info panel
•         bullets are needed to fire guns
•         soldiers without bullets are more likely to flee
•         civilians will not automatically collect bullets
•         added alerts for not having bullets
•         FIXED: corpses can no longer set off landmines
•         "assemble gabion" job will choose closest logs
•         some soldier jobs now better modified by health/bullets/morale/civilization proximity
•         soldiers slightly more into pulling bullets from bullet crates that have already been opened
•         bullets now drop off dead people if said people have any bullets
•         FIXED: crate of ammunition was tagged as "pistol" for some reason
•         landmines now trigger properly on hostile entities
•         landmines will detonate if enemy is in adjacent tiles
•         balance: shrapnel does very little damage to objects
•         created "respond to alarm" job that summons soldiers toward "alarm waypoint"
•         added tooltip to gabion
•         health is now a factor in whether soldiers choose to fight or flee
•         made soldiers less likely to attack things on their own (to avoid the 'one guy hunting down fishpeople across the whole map' thing)
•         made soldiers weighted more to fighting near civilization (see above)
•         added melee attack jobs for soldiers
•         overhauled counterattacking (including for civilians)
•         overhauled weighting of most combat jobs (flee vs. shoot vs. melee vs. counterattack)
•         added Jezail rifle
•         made starting military supplies random
•         FIXED combat jobs not interrupting "Respond to Alarm" properly
•         FIXED landmine scriptErrors
•         rebalanced combat job utility values
•         dead things now don't take damage

Buildings/Agriculture/Economy

•         FIXED: coconut curry now properly requires chillies
•         FIXED: can no longer cook fishperson steak out of fishperson steak; requires raw fishperson meat.
•         FIXED: sugar can be eaten raw
•         FIXED: crop crash (when attempting to harvest spoiled/corrupted crops)
•         FIXED: animals are no longer attracted to human civilization
•         FIXED: chance to plant evil crops was out of whack with intended
•         Farming job utilities more or less equalized
•         Misc. chair/table improvements
•         Beds now have restfulness bonus (applied every 3 seconds while sleeping); in short, better bed = less sleep needed.
•         FIXED: cooking and recooking longpork tag error
•         added ability to flatten terrain & flatten terrain job
•         added Iron Charcoal Kiln / Iron Ceramics Kiln
•         added Brick Charcoal Kiln / Brick Ceramics Kiln
•         added Stone Smelting Crucible
•         added Stone Charcoal Kiln / Stone Ceramics Kiln
•         added gibs to gabions
•         added pfx and sfx for destroying crops, gabions
•         balance: change some crop growth times
•         removed extra "raw_food" tag on wheat flour
•         changed industrial_kiln to charcoal_kiln
•         FIXED: spoiled crops tooltip now says crops are spoiled
•         added "Make Landmine" job to arsenal
•         various foliage textures cleaned up
•         added low-tech brewing vat (w/ unique animations)
•         gunpowder production moved to Arsenal from Chemist
•         Terrain Flattening implemented
•         new module placement prototype implemented (new workflow for placing blueprints then modules; can filter modules by categories)
•         some decor content reactivated (now that we have filters)
•         you can place windows on buildings!

Cults

•         FIXED: cult_power variable typo meant cults were powerless
•         FIXED: eldritch transformation cannot be interrupted
•         Cultists can build stone OR wood shrines
•         shrinebuilding & transformation gives notification
•         people will run away from murderers
•         shrines are now randomly rotated
•         balance: cultist murderers get automatic Frontier Justice
•         balance: cultist murder requires madness
•         balance: cultist murder requires having built a shrine
•         balance: shrine building requires madness
•         balance: shrine building reduces shrine counter (so we don't all just build shrines all the time)
•         balance: death of a cultist will reduce cult_power (Frontier Justice!)
•         balance: reduced madness requirement for some cultist acts
•         a log ticker entry is now created when a cultist murder begins murdering
•         cultists have to go to a shrine, pray, and summon a dagger before performing murder (it's now a two stage process)
•         cultists will now try to use a dagger to murder (rather than an axe)
•         balance: cultist murder requires more murder points
•         balance: eldritch transformation will drain cult power
•         shrines now for real actually get rotated randomly! (seriously!)
•         improved Eldritch Transformation effects
•         "Eldritch Transformation" may no longer interrupt itself

Animals

•         Giant Beetles are now "armoured". 
•         balance: reduced Giant Beetle hitpoints
•         added more animals to biomes (as in, a greater number of the existing animal types now spawn)
•         FIXED animals no longer double-inherit ai_damage (now effectively have 2x hitpoints from before)
•         certain herd herbivores will rampage if attacked (aurochs, giant beetle)
•         large animals will slowly regen health
•         player can give orders to hunt particular animals & this will display icon
•         FIXED: butchering animals and fishpeople can be ordered by click & drag
•         added rampage and herd rampage ability to certain herd animals (aurochs, giant beetle)
•         herbivores will graze again
•         adjusted herbivore wandering

Fishpeople

•         Cleaned up Fishpeople butchering/eating humans
•         FIXED: butchering fishpeople at all
•         Fishpeople get mad when their people are killed (unless they're raiders, which are fair game)
•         Fishpeople can destroy gabions
•         Alerts generated when fishpeople destroy crops or gabions 
•         Reduced absurdly high search range for the Fishpeople's "Butcher Human Corpse" and "Eat Human Flesh"
•         Made it slightly more likely for fishpeople to get butchered, especially by morbid colonists
•         fishpeople attack event reports raider # in log
•         balance: a fishperson will only attack walls a limited number of times (so they breach walls rather than get stuck doing demolition duty)
•         balance: added randomness to fishpeople choosing to attack objects so they're less singleminded about property destruction
•         balance: slightly lowered fishperson health
•         made landmine explosions quite scary to fishpeople in a large radius

Events

•         added landmines to weapon supply drop
•         size of supply drops now based on prestige
•         immigration event gives more feedback via text log
•         balance: every weapon drop is guaranteed to have one crate of ammunition

World Objects

•         FIXED: stumps from chopped trees can be cleared properly now.
•         foragesource visuals now more consistent
•         FIXED clear_object scriptErrors
•         removed spam from tree

UI

•         fixed typos in tutorial 
•         tutorial now pauses the game when tutorial messages appear
•         added more unique module icons
•         added some new icons (landmine, special_category, airdrop crate, negative prestige, sulphur lump)
•         FIXED: Extra windows properly dismissed on game start/load
•         FIXED: Command icons now not doubled on new game/load game
•         FIXED: Un-disabled main menu buttons on returning to main menu
•         module category filters added
•         cleaned up some UX for module placement

Save/Load

•         save games now properly saves rally points (and other beacons)
•         save games now properly saves filters
•         save games now properly saves fog of war
•         save games now properly restores tooltips
•         saving will now create notifications in text log
•         various other fixes to save/load

Engine/Scripting

•         Fixed an recurring error where the game would crash on sending messages to an object in the process of being deleted
•         Adding more checking for above conditions
•         Enabled event dispatch from scripts