Version 0.4 - The Automation Overhaul
0.4.0
17 July 2026
Ore Works
Released
ORE WORKS — S&F Division
Version 0.4 — The Automation Overhaul
Version 0.4 brings a massive overhaul to how you automate and scale your mining operation. With dedicated work rooms, a completely redesigned Black Market, new off-map expeditions, and dynamic live events, your crew is about to become more efficient than ever.
The constant room-hopping that broke jobs and pathing is over. The new Work Room system lets you define named zones (Main Mine, Refinery, etc.). Workers and drones now get a permanent room assignment on spawn - they treat this room as their home base. They will travel anywhere on the map to mine and collect ore, but will always bring their hauls back to the smelters and crates in their designated room. New workers are automatically distributed round-robin across all your unlocked zones.
Need to shuffle your workforce? You can easily reassign workers via the worker panel's new ROOM button, and assignments persist across saves.
This feature is kinda beta, as it may not always work.
Need to shuffle your workforce? You can easily reassign workers via the worker panel's new ROOM button, and assignments persist across saves.
This feature is kinda beta, as it may not always work.
The old ore-for-ore trading post is gone. The Black Market is now a rotating buff shop! It offers a daily seeded selection of temporary boosts:
- Quad Ore Production
- Quad Mining Speed
- Worker Frenzy
- Smelter Overdrive
- Overcharged Tools
- Lucky Expeditions
These boosts are bought with a brand new currency: Artifact credits, which are tied to our new Expedition system.
Expeditions no longer pull your active workers off the mining floor. You can now hire off-map specialists directly at the Black Market and send them out on wall-clock timers. They keep travelling even while the game is closed!
They return with ore hauls and new Expedition Artifacts (Ancient Relic, Strange Geode, Alien Alloy, Mystery Crate, Void Shard) which are used as currency in the new Black Market. Plus, expedition members tier up every 3 completed runs.
Your facility is breaking out of the factory walls. The second expansion unlocks an open-air courtyard - far more physical room than the cramped indoor sectors, with a scattered, natural mining field layout instead of neat rows of bays. It's the biggest single expansion in the game so far.
Your automated facility just got a lot smarter:
- Preferred Auto-Refine Ore: Star a baseline ore recipe in the smelter panel, and workers will prioritize refining that ore first. (Complex alloy recipes cannot be starred to prevent accidental burning of rare resources).
- Drones Are Miners Now: Drones only mine. We've removed all collection and ferrying states, meaning they never fight workers over pickups. Workers now own the full logistics loop.
- Smarter Auto-Smelting: Automation picks recipes preferred-ore-first, then cheapest-ore-first, protecting your diamond and mythril stockpiles.
- Trapped-Ore Escape: Ore that workers repeatedly fail to reach gets a physics nudge and a 30s targeting cooldown, preventing workers from getting stuck trying to path to unreachable drops.
- Hold-to-Mine: Give your clicking finger a rest. Hold Mouse1 to keep swinging. Cooldown, attack speed, and animation timing are fully respected.
- Tool Tier Power: A tool above an ore's tier now instantly destroys the node (e.g., Tier 6 Gold Pickaxe one-shots all Tier 0–5 ores). An at-tier tool breaks a node within 3 swings.
- Mining Augments: A new 5-tier upgrade adding up to +90% swing speed.
- Coal Economy: Coal availability has roughly quadrupled. Nodes drop 5–10 coal (was 2–4) and its spawn weight increased from 1.6 to 2.4. Smelter fuel is no longer a progression bottleneck.
- Impact & Physics Optimization: Ore pickup physics have been optimized, and game props are now static for improved performance. We also capped the crack visualizer wobble intensity to prevent explosive node impacts and physics glitches.
- Ore Highlight Toggle: Colored outlines on dropped ore and ingots can now be toggled on or off in Settings. New drops respect the setting immediately, and toggling it live updates every pickup already on the ground.
- Weekly Contracts: The contract system has been completely rewritten into a data-driven model with over 100 new unique contracts. You now receive 2 massive Weekly Contracts per week that require 7x the effort for 7x the reward!
- Live Events: Server-scheduled events (like Double Ores Weekend or seasonal specials) override game tuning values live. An in-world display shows the active event with a live countdown, and values revert cleanly when the event ends.
- Living Market: The market simulation got a full rework - fresh price movement every poll, momentum trends, rare spike/crash events, and 2-decimal prices so cheap ingots aren't frozen by rounding.
The factory must grow. See you in the mines!
🎁 Added
- Work Rooms: New `WorkRoom` component defines named zones (Main Mine, Refinery...). Workers and drones get a permanent room assignment on spawn - they mine, collect and deliver only inside their room, ending the constant room-hopping that broke jobs and pathing. Reassign via the worker panel's new ROOM button; assignments persist in the save. Scenes without rooms behave exactly as before.
- Black Market Redesign: The ore-for-ore trading post is gone. The Black Market is now a rotating buff shop - a daily seeded selection of temporary boosts (Quad Ore Production, Quad Mining Speed, Worker Frenzy, Smelter Overdrive, Overcharged Tools, Lucky Expeditions) bought with artifact credits. Data-driven via new `.buff` assets.
- Expedition Artifacts: New `.artifact` assets (Ancient Relic, Strange Geode, Alien Alloy, Mystery Crate, Void Shard) are the Black Market's currency. Rarity-weighted drops, each with a credit value.
- Dedicated Expedition Team: Expeditions no longer pull workers off the mining floor. Hire off-map specialists at the Black Market, send them out on wall-clock timers (they keep travelling while the game is closed), and they return with ore hauls and artifact finds. Members tier up every 3 completed expeditions. Legacy in-flight worker expeditions from old saves still complete normally.
- Preferred Auto-Refine Ore: Star a baseline ore recipe in the smelter panel and workers prioritise refining that ore first. Note: The star only appears on single-input recipes; complex recipes like alloys cannot be starred to prevent automation from accidentally burning your rare resources. Persists in the save.
- Hold-to-Mine: Hold Mouse1 to keep swinging - no more click-per-swing. Cooldown, attack speed and animation timing are all still respected.
- Mining Augments: New 5-tier upgrade adding up to +90% swing speed. (The tier-5 automatic swinging was removed shortly after - it fired unprompted whenever ore was near and felt bad. All 5 tiers now boost swing speed only.)
- Trapped-Ore Escape: Ore that workers repeatedly fail to reach gets a physics nudge (pops up and sideways out of props/machines) and a 30s targeting cooldown - workers abandon it, retry later, and never stand beside unreachable ore forever.
- Weekly Contracts: The contract system has been completely rewritten into a data-driven model with over 100 new unique contracts. In addition to 3 daily contracts, you now receive 2 massive Weekly Contracts per week that require 7x the effort for 7x the reward!
- Live Events: Server-scheduled events (Double Ores Weekend, seasonal specials...) override game tuning values live - drop rates, upgrade costs, sell prices - with no game update. Events can recur automatically (e.g. every weekend), and an in-world display shows the active event with a live "Started / Ends in" countdown. Overrides revert cleanly the moment an event ends.
- Outdoor Courtyard Expansion: A second, much larger expansion zone - an open-air courtyard - joins the cramped indoor sectors, with far more physical room for extraction bays and its own grown-in grass and lighting.
🧼 Improved
- Inventory Panel Overhaul: The ASSET MANIFEST panel (ores, ingots, contracts, crew) got a full visual rework - top tab bar replaced with a vertical rail showing live counts per tab, wider layout so crew list and detail view sit side-by-side instead of stacking, ore/ingot cards got color-coded stripes, contracts got a cleaner progress readout, and the credits total now formats with commas like the HUD. Same industrial orange/steel theme throughout, no behavior changes.
- Pause Menu Settings Overhaul: The SETTINGS screen's top tab bar was replaced with the same vertical icon rail used in the inventory panel, widened the panel so labels aren't cramped, and gave the header an accent stripe + subtitle to match. Audio/Controls/Graphics/Bindings tabs, sliders, toggles and key bindings all work exactly as before - visual only.
- Full UI Theming Pass: Extended the inventory/pause-menu look (accent header stripe + subtitle, vertical icon rail for tabbed screens, comma-formatted credit totals) across the rest of the game's UI - the Shop (Hardware/Augments/Facility tabs), the main menu's own Settings screen, the Smelter, and the Black Market. All behavior, purchasing, and data logic is unchanged; this is visual consistency only.
- Ore Highlight Toggle: Colored outlines on dropped ore and ingots can now be toggled on or off in Settings (Graphics tab). New drops respect the setting immediately, and toggling it live updates every pickup already on the ground.
- Visual & Performance Polish: Made game props static for better performance, optimized ore pickup physics, and capped crack visualizer wobble intensity to prevent explosive physics glitches on node impacts.
- Drones Are Miners Now: Drones only mine. All collection/ferrying states were removed - they never pick up ore or ingots, never fly deliveries, never fight workers over pickups, and can't be confused by moved ore. They also avoid nodes a worker is already targeting when alternatives exist. Workers own the full logistics loop.
- Tool Tier Power: New shared tier rule (player, workers - one implementation in `MiningBalance`): a tool above an ore's tier instantly destroys the node (the Tier 6 Gold Pickaxe one-shots every Tier 0–5 ore), an at-tier tool always breaks a node within 3 swings (the Gold Pickaxe vs diamond went from 42 swings to 3), and under-tier tools still barely scratch. Tunable via `tier_adv_oneshot_min` and `equal_tier_max_swings`.
- Coal Economy: Coal availability roughly quadrupled - nodes drop 5–10 coal (was 2–4) and spawn weight raised 1.6 → 2.4. Smelter fuel is no longer a progression bottleneck.
- Smarter Auto-Smelting: Automation now picks recipes preferred-ore-first, then cheapest-ore-first, so idle workers can never quietly burn diamond or mythril stockpiles.
- Living Market: The market simulation got a full rework - fresh price movement every poll (was effectively once per hour), momentum so trends persist into rallies and crashes, rare spike/crash events, and 2-decimal prices so cheap ingots aren't frozen by rounding.
🪛 Fixed
- Worker Index Collisions: Firing a worker in the middle of the crew re-issued its index to the next hire, corrupting tier and expedition save entries. Indexes are now always unique.
- Ore Claim Stealing: A worker grabbing a "second ore for the trip" ignored other workers' claims, leaving the robbed worker chasing a pickup that no longer existed. Claims are now respected and properly taken.
- Worker Promotion Persistence: Room assignments and tiers are saved index-aligned and restored via the same deferred-apply path, so promotions survive firings, expeditions and reloads.
- Smelter Recipes: Fixed an oreType key mismatch that was breaking smelter recipes, and updated the system so local .recipe files are the true source of truth for ingredients.
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