We’re excited to announce Eco Alpha 5.5 is now available!
strangeloopgames.com/eco.
This is a major update adding a ton of new features.
Check out this video we put together showing off a couple of the new features, currency and contracts.
Here’s the list of new features:
Currency
- You can now create currencies at a Mint, using Gold Ingots. Currencies can be utilized at stores or for taxation purposes.
Projects and work orders
- You can now start a recipe without the required ingredients so long as you meet the skill requirements. Whenever new materials are added to the craft table storage, they will automatically be applied to a project. The time required to craft will raise until it reaches the same percent as materials, allowing multiple people to collaborate on a single project asynchronously.
Contracts
- Players can now create contracts in a store, offering to buy labor. There are currently two types of contracts:
- Crafting/delivery contract. With this contract, you specify the materials you want and where you want them, by placing a new ‘Depot’ object. When the Depot detects the required materials are added, it will move them to your private storage and complete the contract.
- Construction contract. This type of contract allows you to specify you want a given kind of table placed at a specific location. When the table is placed at the exact location (and working, thus requiring the surrounding building to be constructed) the contract completes.
- Payment is held in escrow until the contract finishes (either successfully or failed after a number of hours). A deposit is held that is lost if the contract cannot be completed. For construction contracts, the contractor will get temporary building rights to finish the job. Contracts can only use currency.
Table Fees
- Once a table is using currency, a fee can be assigned to its use. Fees can be defined both per-minute and per-item.
Economy Viewer
- The Economy Viewer is a new button on the bottom right of the UI which shows you all the things for sale, things wanted for purchase, and contracts, as well as craft tables and what’s being crafted at them.
Taxes
- The Treasury object now allows the elected leader of the server to set the tax rate on four kinds of taxes:
- Sales Tax. This tax is applied on sales in a store (buying or selling).
- Labor Tax. This tax is applied on contract payments.
- Crafting Tax. This tax is applied on fees specified on a table.
- Direct Payment Tax. This tax is applied when using the /pay command to pay other users.
- Taxes are collected in any currency used in the server, thus the treasury may contain multiple currencies if there are multiple currencies in the world.
- The server leader can also allocate funds, choosing which players get how much money, and why. This can be used especially for public works projects, funding the construction of roads etc. A global message will be sent when funds are allocated.
Features and fixes
- Carts physics has been improved and should be less frustrating.
- Property claim visualization
- Added /unclaim command for admins
- Added hotkeys to some action bar buttons
- Farming and Agriculture simulation now includes nutrients and fertilizers.
- Oil is now a finite resource.
- Tailoring has added some new craftable clothing options that give minor bonuses. Note: tailoring as a whole is still early in development with more to come in the future.
- Drag and resize cursors, and more flexible window resizing
- Links in text that can have tooltips and perform various actions when clicked
- Automatic addition of said links to player chat messages
- Tooltips for many items have been improved significantly
- Vocal sound effects
- New sound and effects for tree logging. Felling trees is destructive to the immediate area of the tree, and will destroy any plants when the tree hits the ground.
- More notes here: Docs.google.com
Beta Backers
While we’re still calling this build Alpha, we’ve decided to open the game to Beta backers from our Kickstarter, so if you backed the Beta you will now have access from your account to download the game!
Thanks and as always join us in Discord, Facebook, and for our dev backers our Slack chat. Looking forward to hearing what you think of the new update, and feel free to email us as well.
-John K, john@strangeloopgames.com
