Farthest Frontier v0.8.0


Table of Contents
Major New Features
Art
Tech
AI
Game

v0.8.0

[Major New Features]

  • Production Limits can now be set from within the Resource Window and/or from building windows. Almost all resources in the game that a town can produce can now have min and max quotas set to control when villagers produce them or return to the labor pool.
  • Many of the game’s systems and windows have been updated with tutorials. These appear in the form of pop-ups that fill you in on game mechanics and in detailed tooltips explaining game windows and how they function. Tutorials have been reset for all users to accommodate this addition.
  • Beautify your towns with a series of all new decorative and entertainment buildings! Enjoy Festival Poles, Ornamental Trees, Flower Urns, Bench Plazas, new Fence types and more!
  • Houses now have a detailed Desirability bar that shows progress towards housing tiers. The tooltip for this bar provides a detailed rundown of every desirability bonus/penalty on that shelter.
  • Villager AI has received numerous upgrades that will make them more efficient and intelligent at performing their tasks while also reducing frustrating instances of them stopping mid-task or dropping items all over town.
  • Building Windows now feature a new button to mark a building for top priority repairs. This button can be toggled once a building is below 90% structural integrity.

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[Art]

  • Updated the visibility for work areas and build grids to make them easier to see, especially on overlays and/or snow.

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[Tech]

  • Optimized snow shaders for improved performance during Winter.
  • Removed erroneous keybinds for reverse building rotation and the analytics window. These were non-functional for players.
  • Fixed an issue where monthly gold income could become reserved by villagers before being applied to upkeep (ex. Theaters, Healer’s House, soldier training, etc.), resulting in those buildings shutting down or soldiers deserting because they were unpaid.
  • Fixed an issue where collapsing sections of building UI windows (ex. Storage or Items Produced In The Last Year) could cause the game to hang.
  • Fixed an issue where soldiers could end up wounded and then garrison the barracks where they would remain in wounded stasis.
  • Fixed an issue where soldiers would not drop their weapons when dying from non-combat causes. This also fixes an issue where raiders stealing arrows/bows/weapons would not drop them when killed.
  • Fixed an issue where building relocation build sites could become rotated from the original building’s facing.
  • Fixed an issue where crop storage of a new field could sometimes be built on top of an existing field.
  • Fixed an issue where saving the game after a late planting in a crop field and then loading could cause the harvest to be missed.
  • Fixed an issue where dying farmers would not get correctly subtracted from Crop Field worker totals.
  • Fixed an issue where expanding a field would zero out weed and rock levels.
  • Fixed an issue where icons over unusually-shaped expanded crop fields would appear offset from the crop field.
  • Fixed an issue where Breweries would display the “No Entertainment” icon. Sorry, brewery tours are permanently cancelled.
  • Fixed an issue where work areas sometimes do not initialize after loading unless a building with a work area is selected first.
  • Fixed an issue where Flatten Tool would deselect resources for Harvest, which can potentially block a build site from ever getting constructed.
  • Fixed an issue where the game rarely began with less villagers than intended.
  • Fixed an issue where fruit trees could cause fertility in the area to drop when planted near wetlands.
  • Fixed an issue where tier 1 Wells would not display low water warnings.
  • Fixed an issue where building icons could be used to select a building mid-upgrade, mid-fire, etc.
  • Fixed an issue where non-forager items could be stored at Forager Shacks.
  • Fixed an issue where traveling merchants arriving at the Trading Post would sometimes immediately leave.
  • Fixed an issue where buying/selling resources at the Trading Post while a gold transfer was in progress would cause the gold amounts to shift, potentially resulting in 0 gold in the town’s storage and all of it moving to the Trading Post every month.
  • Fixed an issue where buying and selling resources back and forth in the Trading Post would cause the storage limit to increase for that resource.
  • Fixed an issue where the Trading Post merchant has arrived icon would remain after all traveling merchants have left.
  • Fixed an issue where rubble from certain buildings would not block construction of new buildings on top of them.
  • Fixed an issue where build sites for buildings/roads could become blocked by new tree growth, preventing their construction.
  • Fixed an issue where expanding a field would 0 out its weed and rock levels.
  • Fixed an issue where flattening terrain could cause buildings to rotate off the placement grid.
  • Fixed an issue where Root Vegetables and Grain stored in a Barn could block other Production buildings (ex. Preservist Building).
  • Fixed an issue where Hunter Cabins and Forager Shacks would excessively warn of no resources in their work areas.

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[AI]

  • Builders now distribute build tasks more intelligently. This means that if a combination of roads/buildings/walls/upkeep construction occurs at the same time, builders will distribute themselves throughout these jobs until they are all completed.
  • Likewise, builders are now more efficient about handling road and wall construction sites, treating them as multiple build tasks rather than one large task that could sometimes end up with just one builder. This should result in roads and walls, and their respective upgrades, being built much faster than before.
  • Villagers now favor housing that is close to their work when selecting shelters.
  • Villagers now prioritize finishing their tasks over dropping what they are doing to do non-critical priorities such as stocking shelter. This change prevents villagers regularly dropping items on the ground and not finishing a job they were in the middle of.
  • Villagers now react to fires more intelligently, with only nearby villagers responding to a fire and then only the number necessary to put it out. In addition, villagers no longer drop water buckets all over the place. Consequently, water can no longer be stored in Storehouses or Storage Carts as that is no longer necessary.
  • Villagers that work in production buildings now prioritize storage over items dropped on the ground. This means no more running across the map to pick up a couple logs when there’s a stockpile across the street. Cleaning up item piles remains the role of Laborers.
  • Fixed an issue with Grocers not stocking shelters in their work area. Grocers now also stock all essentials in their Market more effectively and keep shelters stocked so that villagers do not have to as often or at all.
  • Fixed an issue with laborers not correctly prioritizing soil mixture tasks. Previously, laborers would score soil mixture very low, resulting in the tasks almost never getting done.

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[Game]

  • Professions Window settings are now saved between sessions, rather than refilling workers to max on load.
  • Professions Window values can now be incremented by 10 by shift-clicking and by 100 by ctrl-clicking.
  • Improved the notifications for when raiders arrive/leave to be much more accurate.
  • Increased the intensity of the Flatten Tool.
  • Cows can now graze on fields, improving their fertility. Grazing on crops provides good fodder, but the cows also eat part of the harvest. Clover provides the best fodder bonus.
  • Adjusted Entertainment requirements to make villager entertainment happiness easier to manage.
  • Happiness bonuses can now exceed 100%. Maintaining high happiness thus confers additional benefits.
  • Storage building windows (storehouse, stockyard, etc) now have checkboxes to select/unselect entire categories of items.
  • The Wall Tool now has a priority option.
  • Placing buildings that impact desirability now also shows the difference in desirability in addition to the total.
  • Adjusted desirability overlay to better reflect desirability values.
  • Removed 100 cap on Builder profession.
  • All video options now have tooltips.

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[Buildings]

  • Condemned buildings can now be salvaged and relocated.
  • Relocating a building that requires upkeep, or a condemned building, now also costs the materials required to repair them. The relocated structure is then restored to 100% repaired status.
  • Palisade and Fortified Walls have been moved to the Defenses category. The Walls and Roads category has been renamed to Roads and Fencing.
  • Many production buildings now support more workers in exchange for slower production rates. This offers a more granular control over how fast various resources are generated and consumed.
  • Increased Service cost of many service buildings.
  • Increased the upgrade cost of many production buildings and decorations.
  • Reduced taxes generated by tier 3 and 4 shelters.
  • Increased construction cost of Statues.
  • Increased construction cost of the Cheesemaker.
  • Milking is now enabled by default in Barns. The milking toggle has been removed. Disabling milking had no functional advantage and was a remnant of an old barn mechanic that had been removed.
  • Barns now generate waste based on number of cows during winter, which can be collected by Nightsoil Collectors to generate compost. Be aware that waste accumulating can deteriorate the health of the herd!
  • Upgrading a Barn to tier 2 now resets the herd size to 20 rather than maintaining the values set at tier 1.
  • Hunter Cabins, Forager Shacks, Fishing Shacks and Lookout Towers no longer count towards taxes for Markets.
  • Foundry/Smeltery now produces Gold Ingots more slowly.
  • Fieldstone Wall has been renamed to Fieldstone Fence. Now requires tier 2 to build.
  • Trading Post window now returns to the top when reopened, rather than remembering scroll position from previous viewings.
  • For performance reasons, Small Plazas no longer generate desirability. If you had shelters that depended on them to reach desirability thresholds, it may cause those homes to be at risk of abandonment. This is the price of paving over the frontier!
  • Fixed an issue where the Watch Tower had a smaller line of sight radius than the Lookout Tower.

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[Resources]

  • Cows now reproduce more slowly and generate less meat when butchered. Barns OP.
  • Increased time it takes to consume Luxury goods in homes, but reduced the gold they generated per month in taxes. This in turn makes it easier to maintain luxury happiness while the total gold gained from taxes per luxury item remains roughly the same.

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[Combat]

  • Increased raider spawns on Vanquisher difficulty and reduced raid difficulty on Pioneer and Trailblazer difficulty.

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24 Likes

Best changes ever! nothin better then playing arid highlands and the villagers draining every well to put out 1 fire… not to mention when you trying to sell some possible excess stuff like wood and the trade posts workers runs across the map for 2 wood when the storehouse next door has 1000 wood lol :wink:

hope the release is near, and we will finally see huge optimization to prevent 10fps on high pop on powerful pc
also waiting for new roadbuilding system WITHOUT sticky road placement, same time WITH round road building option
well, in this update workers AI is better than it was before. now a worker from a sawmill is not going from home to store in a hungry mode but he is mostly working and brings logs to sawmill !
same with water for fire, no more water on the street and hundreds of running people with water !
nice to see this done , but it shows the level of RTS knowledge of the team.
ofc it is better to work in similar genres or just in one of them , but work in very different genre of games will cause such things as starting from scratch.
i would like to recommend for the team one more time- to play one of last games from anno series ,banished, frostpunk, aven colony, foundation, and other similar and most popular games for more understanding of what gamers experience in such games is and what are we looking for in games.

1 Like

Lol, bold statements.

Please do enlighten us ignorant devs, what are we missing from those other town builders we have hundreds of hours in, what are we missing that gamers are looking for?

16 Likes

Guys, you’re just wonderful. Farthest Frontier has to be Farthest Frontier; and I, for one, adore it for what it is, and put this game much above many of the similar games. :sparkles:

3 Likes

But RTS/city builder hybrids are a genre of their own, the most prominent example being probably «the settlers» games or the “stronghold” series. I play this game precisely because it’s not those other city Builders but something more like the settlers.

A key difference for me is that in the many other city builders, the people are kind of an abstraction, here they are “real” entities going about doing their thing. I love that. Judging from the success of the game, obviously many people feel the same way.

Although that one guy was being a total duck, one thing I would like to see in FF is an “Attack to Target” move option like you see in RTS games. Having to micro-click an enemy to get my citizens to attack is frustrating. And the defend flag is inflexible and cumbersome.

Dude, go play a game that’s not in early access. You don’t seem to understand what that means.

I am very happy to have been part of the play test and see the great evolution that the game had, you are to be congratulated for every detail, and to have listened to the community. I’ve played several games of the genre but none compares to Farthest Frontier it is unique in its way of being. That the future brings great news and more hours of play.

1 Like

such basic things as production limits , +10 +100 ctrl or shift numbers changes , tooltips, education mode, forester to regrowth trees, free to move game windows that shows in same place where a player put them, but not every time in a certain starting place, there are more such basic things from those games, but devs didnt implement it from the beginning , so they add them in process of development , as players told about them. sticky roads ofc is something not so good as one by one piece of road placement. there should be standard mode to be able to place 1-2 pieces of road if it needed , same time another mode should make curves.
for those players who are new in genre and just saw a nice video on u2be think this is a great game , best of the best… for them - yes it is.
i repeat - those are basic things from similar games, that devs had hundreds of hours in.
i understand it is EA , and i’m not sure how every company understand it , some just polish their games with help of players, some just start from almost scratch , but it looks that both types have a base of the game.
that’s why i told that all those basic things that should be in FF from dev beginning from other similar games are implementing after players point on them .
MAYBE devs suppose to add them in later, but how do we know that? we have a game version , we see there are most of basic things missed, what should we think ? ok , what should i think when i didnt see basic things in late pre release development ?
let us know what are you going to add , to avoid such comments as i posted. i tell things that i see.
look, i’m not angry toxic player, but if some basic things missed , i will tell that. and will tell what i think. this is how FEEDBACK works.
i didnt told that blahblah you devs riuned the game go home and stop coding.
as you remember i made videos with lags, i posted ideas what to change and add… i want to see this game better. but same time i’m not a shy person who will keep silence. i will say what i want to say, will point on problems etc. without aggression, but same time without those gentle manners with soft kind of speech or somth like that and i wont worship for listening to us. you make the game FOR US , so it is only way to earn money to sell us the game that we want to play. so devs have no other way in development as to listen to players. dont understand why people think it is a miracle that devs are listening to us… it is just a common thing and how things work in this world (or just ignore players and hope they will buy the game). call me as you want , but it is me.
ps. i told my version about all those things that happen here - it is a way to inspire players and let them know that devs are making a game for them, so they add things that players want to see. but mostly they are basic things from other similar games that already made. yes it is nice graphics, but again- for new in genre or for people who didnt play most popular citybuilders/survival games. for me, as i played games i told earlier , it is not the best game ever as it is not released yet ofc , but it is just different picture. nice one for sure, but one of. not the one. at the moment ofc.
hope you got it.

2 Likes

Do you have any experience with game development? I’m guessing not given you consider QoL polish features as basic. They’ve built a solid foundation and have left themselves a lot of room to add some more quality features. I’ve followed a few ea developments and honestly think the trajectory crate are on with FF is extremely promising.

2 Likes

as i see , the game is near to be released. so ofc the base should be there for sure.
again - i told my vision. you may agree or not. i just answered to Zantai.
i do not blame devs . i am not game developer and dont know on what stage such things take place in other games. just told what i got in MY MIND. that’s all.
hope devs understand that i am a PLAYER. i do not know how devs think, what they have in their mind, when and what they place in game. so if they have this for later version - fine. just tell “we know that, thanks , will be implemented later”

1 Like

Then you need to brush up on your English more, champ, because your delivery sucks and you come across like a Grade A prick in many of your statements.

Some people don’t seem to realize it’s possible to give criticism and feedback respectfully. Being a shit person isn’t a pre-requisite just because you’re safely parked faceless behind your monitor.

7 Likes

waiting for English lessons from you then.
ps. we are here to discuss about the game, or about each other?

1 Like

We’re here to discuss the game and to be civil to each other. Behave children.

4 Likes

buenas felicidades por el juego estoy enganchadísimo, en cuanto a la ultima versión los nuevos edificios me encantan pero me arece que se ha roto la economía y el entretenimiento del juego, con el centro urbano en nivel 2 ya exige una barbaridad de entretenimiento que el nuevo edificio para ello no es capaz de abordar( he puesto 5 con una población de 120 me sigue exigiendo una barbaridad), esto en una partida que empecé con la nueva versión , he probado con otra partida que ya tenia unos 500 habitantes y unas ganancias económicas importantes y con esta versión si ha ido a banca rota en dos meses y no entiendo muy bien porque.

Welcome to the forum. :slightly_smiling_face:

Changes were made to how much gold you make so that may have affected your town. As for entertainment, this doesn’t really affect your villagers until you’re getting near to upgrading the town centre to tier 3 - or it shouldn’t. Entertainment buildings in the game are all on tier 3 buildings - pub and theatre.

I think you’re missing the point of Early Access. We built the fundamentals to make the core parts of the game work so that we could work with the players to layer on the things they want and enjoy.

None of what you describe is necessary to play Frontier. We’d know. We played it that way for years. Production limits are great, I use them all the time now, but they are, just like +10/+100 increments for example, a convenience, not a critical feature without which the game would not function.

There isn’t some rule for how road placement is supposed to work in town builders. You don’t like our approach, that’s fine, but acting like we’re missing some fundamental feature because another game did it differently is just mind-boggling.

Uh, I think plenty of players playing are enjoying the game just fine given its 85% score, and that’s when it still has a lot of work left to do on it.

Toxic would be a strong word, but you didn’t exactly come in here describing what you feel the game is missing. You went straight for “devs clearly need more experience with RTS” and that “we need to play more town builders”. Those features may be important to YOU, which makes it an opinion. Opinions are fine. We base our priorities off of player opinions all the time, assuming we agree the game would be better for it. But acting like the things important to you are fundamental and missing them is some affront to town builders is not exactly going to be received well.

Well that’s the thing, US isn’t just you. It’s half a million people, and counting. I cannot say with certainty what all those half a million people want, although I can make a good guess, but I can say with absolute confidence that not all of them agree with you on what’s most important. Our job as developers is to make the game that not only we enjoy playing but one that appeals to the largest portion of our player base. Sometimes that means some will be unhappy about our priorities or how we implemented a feature. That’s the reality though. You will never please everybody.

I mean, many developers do but if that were universally true, you wouldn’t hear constant complaints among the gaming community about how developers don’t care or developers are ignoring players.

We take a pretty personal approach by diving right into our forums and responding directly, like I am now. We don’t run like a machine that spits out processed robotic PR responses (which is particularly funny when some players clearly used to that are shocked that there’s developers that won’t just quietly take their bullshit).


So if there are things you dislike or feel the game is missing, by all means, please share that in the feedback forum. We read everything. But denigrating our experience because development or priorities are not catering to your personal values isn’t how you get heard around here.

23 Likes

Have to jump in here, because
a. I’ve only been part of the FF community for about 65 hours of playing time and a few weeks here on the Forum, but

b. I’ve played a heckofalot of games, over probably as many years as anybody here, starting with Avalon-Hill board games back in the early 1960s, working for Simulations Publications in New York for a time in the early 1970s, writing miniatures rules and playing miniatures for 20+ years, and playing computer games for about 30 years now, and

c. Even with all the problems associated with Early Release (translation: Unfinished) games, this game is in a great place. It is playable and enjoyable, if somewhat frustrating at times (but, frankly, not as much as some Finished computer games out there, some from much bigger companies who Should Know Better). It looks extremely good, and for all that Crate keeps insisting it is a Fantasy, non-historical backgrounded game, it scratches my historical gaming itch just fine, thank you - and I have a Hard Core historical itch, being a published military historian and former lecturer at the GAMA convention military history War College.

You say the game is at 85%, but I’d put it closer to 90% and Rising Fast.

6 Likes

then you know, i posted my thoughts , ideas, videos with lags on high pop etc.
for me - critical part at the moment is optimization on 50+ pop. i dont like 0-10fps at few hundreds pop at 1440p with 3070ti and 8700 processor.
i told that those things are basic because as you make A NEW GAME , for me that means there will be some new features or combinations of already known features but it will be a game , better than previous games, i mean other similar games from the past.
for me all that means that those features , that already took a place in other games will brought here in FF as fundamental , as a base of the game. yes, in my last post i told , that i don’t know when and what will be added, what stage will it be etc. so it was my opinion from things that i can see have a place in the game at the moment. those basic things wasn’t here at EA start, so for me it was like "why such basic things from games they have played are not here on late development??? whaaat??? ". now , after your respond, it looks like such things appear now and will appear later , hope to see them before/on release. ofc with huge optimization - that’s most critical thing for me. you can add , change etc gameplay things , but if it will be laggish game, i can’t recommend it on my channel as i won’t play in that game.
i’m pretty sure, i am not the only one who think like that, and who think that features from old games are the base of new games. but now i understand that implementation of such things could happen at late game dev stages.
wouldn’t hurt any one , but as Zantai said - yes, i go straight and told in that way as it happened. sorry if it hurts.
ps. also it’s clear that something for one is not necessary for another one. but i hope you got my idea that new things based on old things. for me - every time. no exceptions. that’s how progress works. someone could be disagree, ok.

2 Likes