Hi Pioneers!
Update 6 has arrived on Experimental. I’d like to preface this event with the fact that some of the new content released isn’t as far along in development as our previous Update releases, so consider this our most experimental Experimental yet! Nonetheless, we think you can have fun with everything here already and we need more of you playing with the incoming changes to help us see how far along they are and inform further development. As always, you can leave your feedback and any issues you encounter on our Questions Site: https://questions.satisfactorygame.com/
Overall, this Experimental period is going to be a little different. We will be pushing updates to finalise content that is released, and we might add some additional content along the line that did not make the initial release. With that in mind we are planning to have a longer Experimental period than usual, so don’t expect Update 6 to hit Early Access before the end of summer.
With that said, what is the content that is coming now? Update 6 shines with some major world updates, impactful changes to Equipment and the MAM progression, several great quality of life updates on the UI side of all things Satisfactory, a full overhaul of our creature AI system, and some under-the-hood changes of major systems. Let’s break that all down a bit more.
You might have already heard about this, but for the avoidance of doubt: There are no overclocking changes coming in Update 6. Also, be safe and back up your saves.
This is probably the most significant single biome change that we still had in the pipeline, and now it is here: The island paradise that is the Spire Coast. We’re very excited to see what you will build in this area, constricted (and hopefully inspired) by the verticality of the spires. There are still oil nodes in the area, but their locations have changed. Other than that, we haven’t done a gameplay pass on the area yet, so you’ll have to wait for new slugs and creature placements, etc. until a later time.
We also managed to do a full visual update of the cliff wall separating the Spire Coast from the Dune Desert, so that large empty plateau is finally ready to be built on as well.
The Swamp has received a full vegetation and atmosphere overhaul to better represent the icky vision we have for it. A place for daring pioneers to test their mettle in the future. Right now, we are happy with the vibe of the area but it will also receive a gameplay pass in the future to match the mechanics of the exploration experience with the new atmosphere.
We haven’t been idle on these high impact world topics either, with a generally improved day and night sky, clouds, and the addition of rainy weather. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the new variety as a myriad of days pass on Massage-2(AB)b.
The overall changes to our atmosphere system have also been put to use with more specific tweaks of the updated areas mentioned above, as well as some of our starting areas: Dune Desert, Northern Forest and Grass Fields. We’ve adjusted the specific lighting, fog, and feel for all those places.
The most obvious content you might have already seen in our videos is the addition of different ammunition types for all the Pioneers ranged weaponry. It’s quite a wide range of new useful and dangerous tools, from utility options like the Pulse Nobelisk to advanced homing ammunition for the rifle. And there is a mini nuke, which honestly is a terrible idea in the best way.
We’ve also improved the UI feedback for switching through your hand slots, making it easier to identify quickly which gadget or weapon you are switching to, and we finally implement a Holster interaction to put away your current hand equipment.
We integrated the new ammunition types throughout different research trees in the MAM and did some rebalancing and reshuffling in the process! On revisiting them you’ll find that costs and placement might have changed.
A major change in terms of general progression is that we’ve moved some of the most popular energy related alternate recipes to standard MAM unlocks. Now you can find both Turbo Fuel and Compacted Coal there, as they are a great addition to the general power progression of the game.
Update 6 introduces the ability to equip almost all existing Body Equipment at the same time. Instead of a single slot, we now have a slot each for: Head, body, back, and legs. The main progression for Body Equipment is now that you can combine them as they get unlocked and you’ll only have to switch your back Equipment between the Jetpack, Hoverpack, and Parachute depending on your preference and the situation.
The most major change you will be able to find here is that the Crab Hatcher got a completely new look and no longer destroys itself when spawning the Flying Crabs. While we made the Flying Crabs themselves far less annoying to deal with, you will now have to destroy the Hatcher to stop them from coming after you.
The Spitters also received a visual change, with several awesome distinct variants! There is a total of three that have adapted quite differently to their environments, as well as a minor variant of the new Forest Spitters to better camouflage in the red forests of Massage-2(AB)b. While they all currently share the same behaviour, we have plans to introduce differences in the future.
We’ve been working on a new AI system that will allow us to introduce more variety to creature behaviour in the future. For this update we tried to largely recreate the feeling of the existing wildlife with some tweaks here and there using this new system. We are not quite there yet with all of them and, this being a full system overhaul, we are aware of some issues and expect to see more as this update goes live. This means that we are planning to still push a few updates to the creatures throughout the experimental period.
The Map feature now no longer unlocks in the MAM, but during Tier 1 instead. On top of that it has received some significant upgrades with Markers that replace the Beacons, Stamps that can be used to highlight points of interest both on the Map and in world, and an updated interaction menu. It now also takes up almost the entire screen to give a better overview.
Radar Towers are still unlocked in the MAM, but they come with additional functionality. If powered they now immediately reveal a set radius on the map around them, highlight all resource nodes in said radius, and give information on exploration rewards and wildlife that can be found there. All this makes them much more useful than they have been before!
This planning feature has received a major boost. The To-do List can now be accessed from any menu by clicking on the right side of the screen. It also received some visual polish, is height adjustable, and can be customised with written notes, which makes it a much more versatile tool than before. You can take personal notes only visible to yourself, as well as global notes that can be seen and edited by anyone in a multiplayer session. It’s even possible to do some light formatting! We’re very excited to see how you use this to your advantage.
The recipe section of the codex has significantly more information available than before. All recipes can now be expanded to show the per-minute stats of all ingredients and products. You can also simulate overclocking in there now and see how that affects the recipes requirements and output.
We’ve made a change to the save system that you hopefully won’t notice, but that is quite significant on our end. Basically, this allows us to migrate world elements that need to be saved onto streaming tiles, where previously they were always loaded. While this won’t significantly affect load or save times, it paves the way for us to add more interactable/saved game features to the world in the future without performance drawbacks.
This does mean that saves from Update 6 onwards are in no way backwards compatible, since the old save system is unable to read the new save files.