Timberborn has a new experimental patch now up for testing on Steam. Update 4 brought a lot of major changes to the game, including the rework of the distribution system.
Workers in Timberborn will now distribute goods automatically to districts with a warehouse for a particular good or a factory that consumes it. Besides that, basic goods like water, food, and logs are always imported even if there are no dedicated storage facilities for them.
Moreover, all storage buildings now have a “Supply” toggle. When a storage facility has this option enabled, the building will continue to accept new goods, but haulers and district crossing workers are employed to pick up the goods from storage and redistribute them to other warehouses as well.
Aside from the distribution rework, the developers implemented performance optimizations in Update 4 with the goal of reducing lag spikes, cutting lengthy loading times, and increasing frame rates. According to their internal benchmarks, this patch has improved average FPS by as much as 80%! Of course, your mileage may vary, but that is still very impressive considering that so many buildings and units can populate the screen as the game progresses.
Changelog
- Districts no longer have range limits.
- Colored range lines remain on paths to inform you that a building might be too far from the District Center to operate efficiently.
- Added a colored heatmap to better communicate ranges across the district. The heatmap is visible after clicking any path tile within the district.
- Added colored numerical range indicators to the Settlement Panel and individual building panels to further help you identify buildings that might be too remote.
- New building: District Crossing (1,000 SP; Logs x 30, Planks x 15). This two-sided building replaces the District Gate. Each side of the building connects to a different district and has dedicated workers responsible for moving goods between the Crossing and the rest of their district.
- Removed Distribution Post and Drop-off Point from the game.
- Goods are distributed across districts proportionally to the capacity of storage and factory inputs for a particular good. Warehouses set to “Empty” or “Supply” are excluded from the import demand calculations.
- Added the “Distribution” tab to the Settlement Panel. Use it to set per-district, per-resource export thresholds and enable or disable import from outside. If the import is enabled, you can also choose whether the good should be imported even if the district does not have any warehouses that store it or factories that need it. That’s the default setting for key goods such as water.
- “Labor” category on the bottom toolbar received a new icon and was renamed “District Management.” It also houses District Center (and District Crossing) now.
Timberborn Update 4 is available on PC.
