Welcome to the Factory Default: Build, Trade, Repeat Alpha v0.0.5.0 update: "A New Continent?". This patch introduces the end-game story with the Ultima Mundi Project, a complete overhaul of the global economy into 24 Market Groups, and the new early-game Freight Truck transport type.

This video summarizes all of the additions, changes, and fixes that are listed below:

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v0.0.5.0 RELEASE NOTES

ADDITIONS

UNCLE OBJECTIVES:

Formally called "Republic of Ultima Mundi", your uncle Ian has set out on building an island in the pacific. He needs your help to get it done.

Prerequisites: 

1. You need to completely buy out your uncle from all of his holdings in your company. He starts out owning 50%. To start his project, that needs to be 0%.

2. You need to have 10 seaports built. This project is going to take massive amounts of resources, without seaports to supply it, you will not succeed.

3. Once those two are done, you will have able to select the small fleet of ships: located in the pacific ocean between Mexico and French Polynesia.

From there, Uncle Ian will give you some exposition, and you will see your total progress for "Phase 0: Foundation of the Foundation". Essentially, you are supplying the materials to build a large dirt island, with some reinforcement for good measure.

This will not be fast or easy. I don't recommend starting this until you have the excess profits to support dumping resources into the story. You will get a small stipend for each sub-phase item you complete, but in the early phases this amount will be miniscule in comparison to your costs.

Finish phase 0, and you will get some more dialogue from Uncle Ian, and an invite to start "Phase 1: Foundation."

You can continue completing these subphases if you like, but there are some items that are not yet in the game, so finishing phase 1 is currently not possible.

Some things to know about RUM (Republic of Ultima Mundi), is that it has infinite storage. (Well, technically 10^300 tons of storage, but I don't think it is possible to come close to that in this lifetime.)

With all that storage, don't be fooled. There is currently no way to get your goods back from the island. (This will be possible in future phases, just not yet.)

Also note that there is no market on RUM, so there is no way to buy and sell goods directly. Everything will have to be shipped.

RUM will be the primary vehicle for experiencing the story. There are currently 20 phases planned, and they will get more and more difficult as you go!

NEW TRANSPORT TYPE: FREIGHT TRUCK

The cheapest, slowest, and smallest form of transport in the game will allow early game trade to make more sense, and allow for the player to take on contracts without having to suffer through years of high transport costs. 

Trucks can hold 10 tons of freight, and travel 600 km in a day. They also only cost $1,200 per day.

In addition, they don't require a new building, they are managed from warehouses. This means that warehouses serve more of a function then being plopped down and never interacted with again. 

Upgrading the warehouse does what it did before, doubling storage, and it also adds 2 export slots like the other transport buildings.

NEW PRODUCTION CHAINS FOR ULTIMA MUNDI PROJECT

IE Crane (NEW) -

    -IE Chassis Frame
    -IE Diesel Engine
    -IE Hydraulic System
    -IE Arm Assembly (NEW):
        -Steel Beams
        -Steel Plates
        -Hydraulic Cylinders
        -Steel Gears
        -Steel Bearings
        -Steel Wire
    -IE Cabin Assembly
    -IE Control Electronics

Towboat (NEW) - 

    -Hull Plates (NEW):
        -Steel Ingots
    -IE Diesel Engine
    -Propulsion System (NEW):
        -Steel Gears
        -Steel Rods
        -Steel Casing
        -Propeller (NEW):
            Bronze Alloy (NEW):
                -Copper Ingots
                -Tin
        -Gearbox
    -IE Cabin Assembly
    -IE Control Electronics
    -Marine Paint (NEW):
        -Polyurethane
        -Pigment
        -Copper Ingots
        -Zinc

Barge (NEW) - 

    -Hull Plates ^^^
    -Steel Beams
    -Steel Plates
    -Steel Rods
    -Steel Bolts
    -Marine Paint ^^^

IE Diesel Generator (NEW) - 

    --IE Diesel Engine
    Alternator (NEW):
        -Copper Wire
        -Steel Casing
        -Steel Bearings
        -Semiconductors
    -Aluminum Frame
    -IE Cooling System
    -IE Control Electronics
    -IE Fuel Tank

Soap (NEW) - 

    -Fat
    -Lye (NEW):
        Sodium Chloride

Frozen Meals (NEW) - 

    -Beef
    -Potatoes
    -Carrots
    -Peas (NEW Fertility):
        -Expert Fertility to Canada, and Russia. 
        -Advanced Fertility to China, India, and USA
        -Normal Fertility to France, Australia, Ukraine, Germany, and Spain
    -Plastic Trays (NEW):
        -ABS Plastic    

Coffee (NEW) - 

    -Roasted Coffee Beans (NEW):
        -Coffee Beans
    -Paper

Bottled Water (NEW) - 

    -Plastic Bottles

Diesel Fuel (NEW) - 

    -Crude Oil

PVC Pipes (NEW) - 

    -PVC (NEW):
        -Ethylene
        -Chlorine Gas

Lumber (NEW) - 

    Timber

10 NEW COUNTRIES:

    Bolivia:

        Expert Production in Boron, Lithium Ore, Quinoa, Alpaca, and Llama (NEW).

        Advanced Production in Antimony, Gold Ore, Lead Ore, Silver Ore, Tungsten Ore, Zinc Ore, Potatoes, and Soybeans.

    Chile:

        Expert Production in Hydro Energy, Copper Ore, Lithium Ore, and Molybdenum Ore.

        Advanced Production in Boron, Gold Ore, Iron Ore, Potash, Silver Ore, Apples, Avocados, Blueberries, Cherries, and Grapes.

    Ethiopia:

        Expert Production in Teff, and Donkey.

        Advanced Production in Opal, Sapphire (NEW), Tantalite, Barley, Coffee Beans, Sorghum, Cattle, Goat, and Sheep.

    Mali:

        Advanced Production in Gold Ore, Cotton, Millets, and Sorghum.

    Mauritania:

        Advanced Production in Wind Energy, and Iron Ore.

    Mozambique:

        Expert Production in Ruby, and Tourmaline (NEW).

        Advanced Production in Coal, Graphite, Ilmenite, Tantalite, and Cassava.

    Namibia:

        Advanced Production in Diamond, Fluorite, and Lead Ore.

    Nigeria:

        Expert Production in Cassava, Sorghum, and Yams.

        Advanced Production in Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Niobium Ore, Coffee Beans, Palm Oil, Peanuts, and Goat.

    Tanzania:

        Expert Production in Helium Gas, and Tanzanite (NEW).

        Advanced Production in Gold Ore, Bananas, Cassava, Sunflower Seeds, Sweet Potatoes, and Cattle.

    Venezuela:

        Advanced Production in Hydro Energy and Buffalo.

NEW FARMED AND MINED RESOURCES:

Sapphires 

        (Added expert to Australia)

    Thorium

        (Added expert to India, Brazil, and Kazakhstan)
        (Added advanced to Egypt, Turkey, South Africa)
        (Added normal to Iran, Nigeria, Thailand, Angola)

    Tourmaline

        (Added expert to Pakistan)
        (Added advanced to Kenya, Indonesia)
        (Added normal to Mexico)

    Tanzanite (Only found in Tanzania)

    Peas

        (Added expert to Canada, Russia)
        (Added advanced to China, India, USA)
        (Added normal to Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Ukraine,)

    Teff (Only in Ethiopia for now)

    Yams

        (Added normal to Chad and Colombia)

    Llama - Provides Raw Milk, Meat, Hide, and Wool

        (Added expert to Peru)
        (Added advanced to Argentina, and Colombia)

SOME RESOURCES DIDN'T HAVE FERTILITIES, NOW THEY DO.

Sillimanite

    Added expert production to India
    Added advanced production to South Africa, and China
    Added normal production to USA, France, Peru

Flax

    Added expert production to Kazakhstan.
    Added advanced production to Canada and France
    Added normal production to Russia, China, Ukraine

Hemp

    Added expert production to China
    Added advanced production to France, United States
    Added normal production to Canada, Chile, Ukraine

More Basalt is needed, so I added fertility to:

    Brazil (Expert)
    India (Expert)
    United Kingdom (Advanced)
    Indonesia (Advanced)
    South Africa (Advanced)
    Saudi Arabia (Normal)
    Japan (Normal)
    Germany (Normal)

CHANGES

MARKET OVERHAUL:

While adding 10 more countries to the game, it became clear to me that each country having its own market doesn't make a significant gameplay difference in most cases. Values in one country might be very similar to that of another, and they are both being calculated 500+ times per day (Once for each item). Then consider that there are 50 countries now, with 120+ more and we have 170+ markets all chugging their tiny market changes. It seems a bit unnecessary. 

So what I have done is divide the world into 24 different markets. The "Rating" of each is based off of the average cost of goods compared to the United States at 1.0. This will be the initial multiplier for all market items when a new game is created.

    var market = {
    "United States Market"                : {
        "Rating"  : 1.0,
        "Members" : ["United States Of America"],
    },
    "Canadian Market"                     : {
        "Rating"  : 0.9,
        "Members" : ["Canada"],
    },
    "Mexican Market"                      : {
        "Rating"  : 0.40,
        "Members" : ["Mexico"],
    },  
    "Brazilian Market"                    : {
        "Rating"  : 0.45,
        "Members" : ["Brazil"],
    },
    "Andean Market"                       : {
        "Rating"  : 0.3,
        "Members" : ["Colombia", "Bolivia", "Chile", "Ecuador", "Peru", "Venezuela"],
    },
    "Southern Cone Market"                : {
        "Rating"  : 0.35,
        "Members" : ["Argentina", "Guyana", "Paraguay", "Suriname", "Uruguay"],
    },
    #"Caribbean & Central American Market" : { # NONE OF THESE COUNTRIES ARE IN THE GAME YET
        #"Rating"  : 0.2,
        #"Members" : ["Antigua", "Barbuda", "The Bahamas", "Barbados", "Belize", "Costa Rica", "Cuba", "Dominica", "Dominican Republic", "El Salvador", "Grenada", "Guatemala", "Haiti", "Honduras", "Jamaica", "Nicaragua", "Panama", "Saint Kitts", "Nevis", "Saint Lucia", "Saint Vincent", "The Grenadines", "Trinidad", "Tobago"],
    #},
    "European Union Market"               : {
        "Rating"  : 1.05,
        "Members" : ["Germany","Austria", "Belgium", "Bulgaria", "Croatia", "Cyprus", "Czech Republic", "Denmark", "Estonia", "Finland", "France",  "Greece", "Hungary", "Iceland", "Ireland", "Italy", "Latvia", "Liechtenstein", "Lithuania", "Luxembourg", "Malta", "Netherlands", "Norway", "Poland", "Portugal", "Romania", "Slovakia", "Slovenia", "Spain", "Sweden", "Switzerland"],
    },
    "United Kingdom Market"               : {
        "Rating"  : 0.95,
        "Members" : ["United Kingdom"],
    },
    "Russian Federation Market"           : {
        "Rating"  : 0.5,
        "Members" : ["Russia" , "Belarus"],
    },
    "Balkan & Eastern Partnership Market" : {
        "Rating"  : 0.25,
        "Members" : ["Ukraine", "Albania", "Armenia", "Azerbaijan", "Bosnia", "Herzegovina", "Georgia", "Kosovo", "Moldova", "Montenegro", "North Macedonia", "Serbia"],
    },
    "North African Market"                : {
        "Rating"  : 0.2,
        "Members" : ["Egypt", "Algeria",  "Libya", "Morocco", "Tunisia"],
    },
    "West African Market"                 : {
        "Rating"  : 0.15,
        "Members" : ["Nigeria", "Benin", "Burkina Faso", "Cabo Verde", "Chad", "Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)", "The Gambia", "Ghana", "Guinea", "Guinea-Bissau", "Liberia", "Mali", "Mauritania", "Niger",  "Senegal", "Sierra Leone", "Togo"],
    },
    "East African Market"                 : {
        "Rating"  : 0.12,
        "Members" : ["Ethiopia", "Burundi", "Djibouti", "Eritrea",  "Kenya", "Rwanda", "Somalia", "South Sudan", "Sudan", "Tanzania"],
    },
    "Central African Market"              : {
        "Rating"  : 0.1,
        "Members" : ["Angola", "Cameroon", "Central African Republic", "Democratic Republic Of The Congo", "Equatorial Guinea", "Gabon", "Republic of the Congo"],
    },
    "Southern African Market"             : {
        "Rating"  : 0.3,
        "Members" : ["South Africa", "Botswana", "Comoros", "Eswatini", "Lesotho", "Madagascar", "Malawi", "Mauritius", "Mozambique", "Namibia",  "Zambia", "Zimbabwe"],
    },
    "Chinese Market"                      : {
        "Rating"  : 0.25,
        "Members" : ["China", "Taiwan"],
    },
    "Indian Subcontinent Market"          : {
        "Rating"  : 0.2,
        "Members" : ["India", "Pakistan", "Bangladesh", "Bhutan",  "Maldives", "Nepal", "Sri Lanka"],
    },
    "Japanese Market"                     : {
        "Rating"  : 1.10,
        "Members" : ["Japan"],
    },
    "Korean Market"                       : {
        "Rating"  : 0.75,
        "Members" : ["South Korea" , "North Korea"],
    },
    "ASEAN Market"                        : {
        "Rating"  : 0.3,
        "Members" : ["Indonesia", "Brunei", "Cambodia",  "Laos", "Malaysia", "Myanmar", "Philippines", "Singapore", "Thailand", "Vietnam"],
    },
    "Persian & Central Asian Market"      : {
        "Rating"  : 0.35,
        "Members" : ["Turkey", "Afghanistan", "Iran", "Kazakhstan", "Kyrgyzstan", "Mongolia", "Tajikistan",  "Turkmenistan", "Uzbekistan"],
    },
    "Gulf & Levant Market"                : {
        "Rating"  : 0.6,
        "Members" : ["Saudi Arabia", "Bahrain", "Iraq", "Israel", "Jordan", "Kuwait", "Lebanon", "Oman", "Palestine", "Qatar", "Syria", "United Arab Emirates", "Yemen"],
    },
    "Oceania & Pacific Market"            : {
        "Rating"  : 0.9,
        "Members" : ["Australia", "Fiji", "Kiribati", "Marshall Islands", "Micronesia", "Nauru", "New Zealand", "Palau", "Papua New Guinea", "Samoa", "Solomon Islands", "Tonga", "Tuvalu", "Vanuatu"],
    },
}

Some markets have only one country in it, some have up to 30. It all depends on geography and economy size. Value's of items are initially calculated by taking the base value of an item, multiplied by the market's economy rating (Compared to the United States Market) and then multiplied by a "Fertility Factor": which is all the country's fertilities taken into account. So a market with all expert iron ore producers is going to have a much lower fertility factor than a market with only one or two iron ore producers. 

Typical daily market fluxes still apply to markets, and there are chances of extreme boom or bust.

These markets also include countries that are not in the game yet, so when they are added, they will slide right in without needing to work their market. That being said, I had to temporarily remove one market, as I don't have any of those countries in the game yet. (Caribbean & Central American Market)

Additionally, reducing the number of markets shrank the save file size about 25%

REMOVED THE CONFUSING MEASUREMENTS:

Now all items will be displayed as either "t" for "tons" or "u" for "units". In the background, all items are still assigned the adjusted unit labels to account for different masses, but it seemed silly to confuse the player with a bunch of letters when it all just means "units" in some form or another. The only confusion could come from transport, where a player might have thought they could transport more per load than is allowed.

UNCLE IAN NOW TAKES FROM YOUR PROFITS: 

At a rate equal to the number of shares he owns in your company. Buy him out to regain all of your profits! You "Positive" cashflow will appear yellow while it is subject to Uncle Ian's share.

MAX LEVEL FOR ALL BUILDING TYPES IS NOW 10:

(Other than power plants which can't be leveled up). When dealing with exponents, it's best to have a cap. Even with this, resource buildings will be able to produce 45 times their base at level 10, at a hefty price. (You can get slightly more output by turning up the employee count.)

UI OVERHAUL - Not much to say about it, some little UI changes, hopefully it is easier on the eyes. UI will be an ongoing effort. 

ADDED LITTLE CLOSE "X"ES TO THE MAIN SCREEN: I think ESC is easier, but they felt incomplete without the x button.

MOVED OBJECTIVES FROM THE NEW TAB TO THE CONTRACTS SCREEN

MORE:

-Renamed "Wood" to "Timber" in order to separate it from the newly added "Lumber"

-Loans and Private shares buttons can be pressed and dragged to perform multiple actions quickly, rather than have to click each button.

-Bringing the game speed down to 0x has been changed from the "~" key to the "0" key. This was to make room for console commands currently inaccessible by the player.

-I've removed some options from the "New Game Options":

    -Uncle's Starting Ownership % - The story only really makes sense at 50%.

    -Story Toggle: The game progression doesn't make sense without the story, and it can be skipped if you aren't interested.

    -Objectives Toggle: The objectives are unintrusive, there is no reason they should be off. If you think the rewards are too cheaty, simply don't collect them.

    -Starting buildings Toggle: Again, the story doesn't make sense without them. If you don't like them, you can simply demolish them. (Not sure why you would, they give you a positive money trend at the start of the game.)    

-Fertilities in countries will now how all fertilities on the bar. (Excluding Gases and Synthesis). This only effects countries that had more fertilities than would fit.

-Previously I had "Asphalt" as a mined material, and "Bitumen" as a refined material. I decided to get rid of asphalt, and have bitumen be a mined material.

-Replaced icons for "Cassava" and "Sugar beets" to better reflect the resource.

-Removed objective for "Buy 500t of Gravel", this was an outlier, and is pretty useless now that Uncle Ian has his own objectives.

-Added a "Build Warehouse" objective since there is now more of a reason to do so.

-When creating a trade, if you hover over each item, it will tell you how much of that item will fit in a full load. (Since there are 10 different size items, this could be important.) I had to create one single exception for the new freight trucks, as there is a item weight that is ~100 tons. Obviously, that won't fit on a truck with a 10 ton capacity.

-Trade vehicles now scale up from nothing when they spawn on the globe, and then scale down to nothing when they reach their destination. This will cut down on the cutting in and cutting out of existence instantly. 

-It was requested to me to make it so that you can click on neighboring countries while in the tilemap screen. This so that you don't have to return to the globe with just moving to a nearby country. That is now possible. Just hover your mouse over the gray areas of the tilemaps to see what countries you can navigate too. It's not terribly accurate, and looks a bit janky, but this should make navigation much easier. Going through and adding all the collisions made me think about how I might overhaul the current tilemap system all together. We will see.

PERFORMANCE FIXES:

-While chasing a bug I realized I had an input(event) on every country's collision mesh. So every time the mouse so much as moved, almost 200 scripts ran 30 lines of code. On top of that, when you would click on the country, all 200 would try to open the country tilemap at once. Yikes! This contributed to the annoying problem of sometimes getting stuck after clicking on a country and it not opening up. Then getting so stuck you have to restart the game. (This combined with a while-loop that was causing some issues and is now removed.)

-I added a simple loading screen to cover up the visual chug that comes with loading a game.

-Reduced typical save file sizes by about 25% - Item values were calculated to 8 decimal points, reducing it to 2 (where cents end) pushed down the save file size. Yes, the price of every item in every country is saved otherwise you will have random item values every time you load into a saved game.

-Reduced the save file thumbnail to about 10% to 20% of previous size on average. (Was saving a full resolution .png, now saving a 480x270 .jpg)

-Quicksave and Autosave are now disabled during story exposition. (Autosave will give itself a 1 minute timer and try again.) This is just to avoid issues.

BUG FIXES:

Fixed issue with sunlight source continuing to rotate despite game being paused, and then the skybox jumping to catch up when the game is unpaused.

Fixed issue with new game options saying that every game was "Custom" despite hitting the difficulty buttons on the top.

Fixed issue with items clicked on in the recipe visualizer not bringing you to the item you clicked sometimes.

Fixed issue with Airport, Seaport, and Train Station names overwriting one another when loading a saved game. This would mostly lead to trade routes that could not be deleted. (Even if you delete them, and can't see them, they would still run.)

Fixed issue with Story mode getting stuck. If you pressed the mouse down on the "Next" button, and then hit space, it would trigger twice, and if you happened to be at the end of the current story tree, Uncle Ian would stay on screen and you would have to load or start a new game.

Fixed issues with demolishing buildings changing tile types to land. (Demolish a seaport, and you would lose your shore tile.)

Goals for v0.0.6.0:

    -Uncle Missions Tier 1: And the accompanying new items needed.

    -Global Perception (Stars and Leaderboards with Rivals)

    -Pollution and carbon offsets (Can build parks with huge carbon offsets, expensive to maintain)

    -Influence Generation based on Global Perception

    -Government Bailouts at the significant cost of global perception (Something to save the player from death spiral) (Negative global perception will fall off after a predeturmined time. (Maybe some options: $1B bailout for 5 years of negative perception, $10B bailout for 10 years of negative perception, etc.))

    -Add more countries, and figure out which remaining countries will have their own tilemap/inventory, and which ones will be lumped together. (No disrespect to small countries, it's just that every country included adds to the daily compute required, as well as quite a bit of research and tedium to add them to the game. Once everything is included, it wouldn't be too hard to go back and split some regions up if it makes sense.)

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If you happen to play this update, please let me know what you think!

-Chett