Clockwork Empire update means stew no longer requires eyes to boil

You’ve probably heard the saying that a watched pot never boils. Not in Clockwork Empires, at least, not initially. Workers had to stare at pots, for them to cook, presumably radiating some kind of dark, Lovecraftian energy. However, irradiated stew is no longer! The latest Clockwork Empires patch means cooks don’t have to intently watch the pot.

Other changes mean that colonists will no longer have conversations with cultist murderers and the enemy AI’s been overhauled, too.

The major changes that come with the v32 update are a new building system that lets you renovate buildings by placing modules to expand their use. Plus, you can now take command of the workcrews that run your workshops, giving you control to prioritise different tasks in their production line.

There’s now ammunition to consider when fighting, so you’ll need to make sure your soldiers are kitted up before going off to fight murderous fishfolk.

Those fishfolk will be more deadly than ever, too, as the combat AI’s been overhauled. Thank God Gaslamp have added landmines to thin out this gilled murders.

With those main points out the way, here’s a few select patch notes from the changelog:

Fishpeople get mad when their people are killed (unless they’re raiders, which are fair game)
colonists will no longer have conversations with cultist murderers
coconut curry now properly requires chillies
food memories weren’t working correctly
corpses can no longer set off landmines

Oh, and your city folk will no longer run from a dead murderer. Though, frankly, if a dead murderer were to come after me, I’d run like hell.

Being an Early Access game, Clockwork Empires is still very shonky around the edges, Fraser said in his review that it’s currently “a ghost of a very interesting game” but when he thinks about what’s to come he “can’t help but want to play again.” And I can’t help but be excited for it after reading Rob’s interview with the developers.

The full changelog can be read on the next page.

Patch Notes:

Clockwork Empires v32 update: “Midnight Defence of Skullswamp Arsenal”

Major Gameplay Changes

Added a new building module placement system (and re-enabled renovation)
Added player control over which workcrew works in a workshop
Stew can be cooked without having to intently watch the boiling pot!
Added an ammunition system (and landmines!)
Improved combat AI

That’s just a taste, we fully 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, rather more challenging as well).

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 death descriptions
FIXED: people fleeing from dead 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

workcrews can be assigned to workshops manually
some jobs now only require being initiated by a worker (kitchen jobs in particular; so stew doesn’t require someone intently staring at it to cook)
FIXED: coconut curry now properly requires chillies
FIXED: can no longer cook fishperson steak out of fishperson steak; requires raw fishperson meat.
balance: sugar can now be eaten raw
FIXED: several variations on crop errors 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!
FIXED: window model alignment
FIXED: various decor alignment

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

fixed typos in tutorial
updated tutorial slightly
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

Full screen rendering made much easier to switch in/out of application and use with Twitch
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