Patch #19: Fishing Simulation, Item Dumping, Easier Spot Mining

Patch #19

Got too many of an item? Want to get rid of a warehouse of stone quick? Consider researching the new advanced Ocean Dump! Hook up a belt to this nifty device and watch as all your problems drop away!

WARNING: While dilution is the solution for pollution it can have temporary impacts on localized fish populations.

Yes that is correct! We've added fully simulated fishing! Now packing a ton of docks into a pond will not result in unlimited food but instead rapid collapse of your cod fishing stocks! In contrast we've boosted the number of fish an optimized fishing dock can catch!

So gaze above your open ocean, and go catch-them-all!

Every island has a generated fish population driven by the local environment. When a fishing dock performs a fishing cycle its chance of catching anything is driven by the availability of catchable shore fish within range. This range starts at about 5 cells and goes out with weakening strength to about 15 cells.

We've known for a while that we wanted to rework the fishing docks. Fishing docks within Whiskerwood's balance exist as a powerful and easy early game source of food. Late game scaling up should require careful planning and strategy. Similar to hunting. Fishing produces a lot of food for only a little labour. To reach this proper balance we knew fishing needed a proper simulation and now we have it!

Fish populations will slowly recover. A spread out network of fishing docks can catch a vast volume of fish, but be careful to balance the distances between docks to avoid overfishing.

The item ocean dump, and pollution system, integrate with this fishing layer. Most items, and pollution, dumped into the ocean will hurt the fish population, while a few will boost fishing. Press L, the new layer hotkey, to see fish populations at any time.

For players who's save files are highly dependent on large clumps of fishing docks we've created a backup branch of the last patch. You can switch to this "Beta Branch" to keep playing with the old patch as you rework your colony to accommodate this shift in fishing. This branch is called patch18_old_fishing

A third major change is mining centric. Players who do Minecraft-style tunnel and prospecting mining should have an easier time now. We've expanded the range of vision underground so you can see further and mine fewer scouting shafts.

Daniel

Lead Programmer on Whiskerwood

Changelog

v0.6.183 Patch #19

Features

• Add item dump to dispose of any items into the endless ocean
• Add fishing stock simulation
• Rework fishing docks to operate off fish population
• Simulate fishing population impact of toxic dumping and nutrient dumping
• Beach and ocean floor fertility is now driven by groundwater salinity, which permeates through sandy ground. Terraforming blocks salinity flow and drained ocean floor is often quite fertile after salinity has fallen enough.

Gameplay

• Increase terrain survey depth to 2 cells
• Farmers will now sow after tilling on fields with rock removal active, if there are no more rocks to remove
• Farmers will never sow a field with rock removal active if there are still rocks to remove
• Adjusted internal priorities of some farm tasks
• Add variant of Steam Booster with opposite launch direction
• Replacing flooring type will no longer remove path decoratives

UI

• Use local timezone for times and dates on load menu
• Use locale date & time formatting for load menu based on selected language
• Fix Liftback not grouped with other Advanced Belt research locked schematics

Bugs

• Fix a bug where farmer behavior priority could become inaccurate when many farmers were working on a field
• Fix unintended text downsizing on farm crop selector
• Crops now correctly grow 10% faster during Clear Skies weather
• Fix clicking on mine carts sometimes selecting passengers instead of kicking mine cart along track
• Fix being able to click out of a reward panel without selecting a reward.
• Fix rail tool consuming resources when trying to build rail underwater
• Fix rail tool inconsistency in support costs when building ramps
• Fix belt corners causing bottlenecks and item slowdowns
• Fix buildings with directional smoke vfx not matching wind direction
• Fix Extractor sometimes showing an inaccurate warning when changing filter settings.

Crash Fixes

• Fix crash on load if meta save files have been corrupted, instead regenerate a fresh meta savefile
• Fix crash with negative relative time when mods reduce day length

Acknowledgements

• Thank you to iceball and Kralmir on Discord for drawing attention to the fact that rock removal affected farmer behavior on fields without rocks
• Thank you to Eclipsechris! on Discord for suggesting inverted steam boosters
• Thank you to Decado for pointing out path decor issue
• Thank you to Lord Yanaek for reporting reward panel issue
• Thank you to pomazánka on Discord for reporting the underwater rail bug
• Thank you to Iceball12 on the Discord for reporting how corner belt pieces caused slowdowns
• Thank you to Creepy Gnome on the Discord for reporting the shown play times were using UTC and not local times
• Thank you to Syruptmunster on the Discord for pointing out smoke vfx was not respecting the wind direction
• Thank you to Martin over email for reporting the meta save corruption crash
• Thank you to Buckminsterfullerene for reporting the crash when his mod reduces the day length

Steam Reviews

We'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment to share your thoughts about Whiskerwood in a Steam review. Each review helps us understand what you enjoy, what you'd like to see changed, and what you'd like to see added next. It's a powerful way for you to not only share feedback with us directly but also influence what comes next in a patch. We're carefully reading through all feedback, and your opinion matters!

Official Wiki and Beginner's Guide

We have some fantastic resources to help get you started on your colony building in Whiskerwood. Check out our beginner's guide and our official community wiki page to help get you the answers you need.

We also have a compilation of tips and tricks sourced from the community to help you out right here:

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