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Hello everyone!
In this week's dev blog we will talk about terraforming and what is planned to improve it.
What is terraforming?
Let’s start with an overview: The term “terraforming” is about two core features: removing existing terrain blocks (voxels) and placing new terrain blocks, which allows you to shape the world to your desire. Today I’m going to focus on removing (mining) blocks, as that is the part where we get most requests for improvements.



What’s wrong?
I have identified the following core problems:

It is slow: Mining blocks by hand (drill/laser) takes too long. There is research to improve the speed, and the laser is an overall speed increase over the drill, but ultimately it stays pretty slow. It is fine for a couple blocks, but for large scale excavations it gets tedious quickly. This is especially true if you want to excavate large pits for foundations, which in turn leads to players building floating platforms for convenience.
It is cumbersome: The amount of reports about the drill range being too short and similar complaints isn’t particularly low and I get that. You’re in a cave and you want to drill out just two blocks above the character and you can’t reach the block without building yourself some support first. It gets better with the laser, but that one is unlocked only late in the game.
It isn’t fun: In case the two issues above didn’t make you stop excavating at all, you’re left with a boring un-fun task. For many players it feels like the game tries to discourage you from doing large scale terrain modification.

Looking at the list I want to mention that when I designed those systems, it obviously wasn’t my intent to make you have a bad time with terraforming. I think I made a mistake in wanting to have a strong progression. I wanted it to be slower and more limited at first, so that it feels more rewarding when you unlock those researches that improve it. Ultimately I created a system that never really works well. While I still believe that unlocking improvements is an important part of the game, I have changed my perspective on the matter. In hindsight, I’ve misjudged the importance of terrain modification for regular factory building. While terraforming is central and important for mining, it isn’t for regular factory building and therefore people are not going to use it if it is not super accessible.
Solutions & Changes
The new plan for terraforming is to make it as accessible as possible. I just don’t think there is any value in making it cumbersome at the start of the game. I’m looking for a change that makes cosmetic terraforming something that doesn’t bore you and makes you feel like it can be done relatively quickly. That being said, I still want unlockable improvements coming from the research tree. Over the past week I’ve prototyped a system that looks very promising, so let us proceed to the exciting part.
Character Mining Drones
We already have a drone miner building with mining drones to mine ores, so why not give the player robot personal mining drones to do the job for him. In my prototype you can designate blocks (and whole areas) for excavation, and as long as you’re close enough to that area, your personal drones will excavate for you. Here’s a video:

Keep in mind that this is proof of concept and lacks polish in many ways.
As you can see there are multiple ways (single block, “floor”-shaped, 3d box) to mark blocks for excavation and then your drones just fly to the block, mine it for you, and bring you the resource. It is way faster than before, so it should make it more viable to modify terrain early in game. The system still provides plenty of room for research improvements: Drone Count, Drone Speed, maybe even carry capacity and other things.
Initial testing is positive and excavating feels good, therefore it is time to share this and see how the community reacts. As of now I think we would remove the drill, keep the laser as the default mining tool and integrate those new features into the laser. The new mining drones would be available from the start so that you can enjoy terraforming right away.
You might wonder if that makes explosives obsolete and I don’t think it will. If you want to get rid of terrain quickly, without needing precision, explosives will still be a bit faster.
It’s also worth noting that this might not be the only new terraforming mechanic, we might still look at stationary buildings which can excavate for you, but we haven’t decided that yet.
Feedback
I feel like I’m saying this in every blog post, but please let me know what you think. Do those changes look good? Do you think my analysis about the problems is correct, did I miss anything? Do you have any other suggestions? Anything else? Let me know in the Steam comments below or on our Discord.
Thanks for reading,
-mrmcd

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