The last time I played Techtonica, I unlocked the elevator and hit a wall when it came to blast miners ratios. Without getting into the weeds, Techtonica has (had?) two technology tiers for extracting base materials, and the second tier had not yet filled out, nor was it optimized. I had seen all there was to see. And I saw potential, if only needing focus.

1.0 is coming on Nov 7, and with it a very wide range of changes. And if there’s anything to take as a result of this, is that focus is front and center.

• Updated narrative – which I thought was a highlight in the EA version.
• Improved player tools (the Omniseeker and jetpack) which is QoL. FINALLY you have vertical movement (instead of just hovering), and just overall easier tools to explore dark caves.
• Machine changes which are generally QoL/balancing
  • Mk1 assemblers still give 2x the results as hand crafting – so a chain of 3 assemblers gives 16x more than manual)
  • Mk2 assemblers now give 4x the results as hand crafting. a chain of 2 = 16x the results, a chain of 3 = 64x. This change is likely required from the final floors.
• Long Filter Inserter. This will help clean up belts, as the ninja work required currently is not that much fun.
• Research cores are 1×1 instead of 2×2 (8x smaller), and the composer (the holder of cores) has new options.
  • This one is extremely meaningful for later portions of the game, where you needed massive caverns to store all the cores. This will be interesting to see play out.
• Recipes have been rebalanced so that the math makes sense (yay!)
  • This includes the weird carbon powder sink loop.
  • Curious as to how the plant loop will work.
  • I like the word loop. Loop. (Aside: Techtonica has quite a few production loops, I enjoy them.)
  • No more fractions!
• A new sand biome with materials, power, and whatnot.
  • This is interesting as you are pumping out sand to discover items below you. I am quite curious as to how this will work, and be sustainable.
  • The devs were clear that biodiesel is required to power the tools here. That fuel was available prior, but had zero use, even in mega factories, as the production chain was too complex for any reasonable benefit. New crushers seem to address that.
  • A new production loop should be nice to see. Loop!
• The elevator is no longer end game, but core to progression. There are 16 floors to explore and it can act as a sort of main bus, with 30 inputs/outputs connected.
  • Mechanically, this seems to mean smaller groups of factories rather than large sprawling ones. I’m curious how the relationship between floors will go… like once you’re on floor 8, do you need to ever interact with floor 3 again? How does central storage work?
  • Curious as to how this impacts exploration, which was a key part of the narrative.
  • Devs have been straight on the fact that this breaking into pieces will dramatically improve performance. Which is good, because this was certainly an issue in late game. Power floors were notorious culprits.
  • With 30 in/out options and 16 floors, the math seems to only allow 2 ports per floor. It would seem logical that some floors will not have any production outputs for the elevator, or, sadly, that the ports will be sushi belts.
  • I am super curious as to how this impacts power generation. Mk2 cranks are crazy powerful, but require water. If you can’t transport power, then you need to transport fuel… much different loop.
  • This certainly reminds me of the space elevator in Satisfactory, in that you send stuff up.
  • Curious as to how the monorail will work now. It was very OP prior, but designed entirely to move stuff across a large map. If the maps are smaller, then not much need, especially given the power/logistical challenges of installing them.

It would appear that the game is pivoting from a more sandbox environment to a linear progression path. The net effect of this is that balancing becomes much easier to accomplish, and the narrative easier to build. Clarity of focus to the player is huge boon. The downside to this is lack of flexibility, so the rather, uh, “creative” approaches to factories just won’t work here. You can’t move between floors unless you’ve got a specific set of things done, and that is certainly more limiting.

I will withhold any cynical take on the timing of 1.0. I’m very much looking forward to this set of changes. It was my larger gripe from before, with a ton of potential but just not enough focus to deliver to set it apart from Factorio/Satisfactory/DSP. What’s listed here is an absolutely massive patch of content, and I’m extremely interested to see how this game finds it’s corner of the box to play in.