s&box

4 September 2026

27 changes in this update

- The world has a capacity of 500 players at a time. When it is full, you join a waiting list, see your position over the HUD and get in automatically when a spot frees up. The main menu shows players online against the capacity
- Land you own shows what it produces: wheat, corn for hops, vegetables, vines and berries stand in rows on a field, cattle graze on pasture, and boulders lie in quarries, ore sites and sand pits. It works on other people's land too, so you can see from the air what a rival is working
- Research is a tree now, in the Company window: six branches (Agriculture, Industry, Logistics, Trade, Property, Corporate) with 34 nodes. Each node is paid once and stays forever. Pick a node to see what it needs, what it does and what it costs
- Some research nodes rule each other out: Irrigation or Second crop, Mass production or Craftsmanship, Bulk haulage or Express, Retail chain or Export licence, Premium lets or Lean upkeep. Choose one, the other stays closed
- Keystone research joins two branches: Cold chain (fresh goods sell dearer), Brand (finished goods sell dearer), Redevelopment (cheaper floors) and Research lab (two researches at once)
- New things research can unlock: a second crop on every parcel, business level 6, collection tours with 16 stops, a bigger credit line, cheaper property commission, rent and fees that keep running for 12 hours offline instead of 8
- Second crop: with that research, pick a second produce on a parcel in the land inspector; it grows alongside the main crop at 40 % of its rate
- The Company window has tabs now: Overview, Research and Shares. It used to show everything at once, from your figures and the level ladder down to the share market and the research tree. Overview keeps your numbers, the level ladder, the business cycle, the quarterly reports and the settings for name, colour, currency and wages. Research holds the tree. Shares holds the market, your shareholders and anything you control. The Research tab counts how many nodes you have done, the Shares tab how many orders you have open
- Alerts that lead into the Company window now open the right tab: "your company is controlled" goes to Shares, "almost the next level" to Overview

- Research opens at company level 2 instead of 3. Depth 3 and 4 need level 3, keystones level 4
- One research runs at a time; the Research lab keystone gives a second slot. The four old lanes ran all at once
- Research you had already bought is carried over into the tree: Automation became Work planning, Shift system and Mass production, Agronomy became Soil analysis, Crop rotation and Irrigation, Logistics became Route planning, Fleet maintenance, Long tours and Bulk haulage, Trade became Sales training, Brokerage and Wholesale. Where a pair rules each other out, your side is the one that matches what you had
- Production speed from fittings, research and morale together is capped (rate_cap). Nobody is near the cap today, it is a guard against stacking
- Balance pass over every business: at base prices each one now pays back its founding in 56 to 148 hours. Before, the mill, sawmill, joinery, textile mill, jam kitchen, print shop and tool factory took 220 to 670 hours
- Recipes changed for that: the mill makes 3 flour from 3 wheat (was 2), the sawmill 3 planks from 3 timber (was 2), the joinery needs 2 planks per furniture (was 3), the textile mill makes 3 cloth from 3 wool (was 2), the jam kitchen 3 jam from 3 fruit (was 2), the print shop 2 books from 3 paper (was 1 from 2), the steelworks 3 steel per cycle (was 2)
- Base prices up for three finished goods: clothing €28 (was €22), tools €38 (was €30), windows €30 (was €24)
- Upgrading a business costs 35 % of what it did, and every level now adds 75 % more output at full staff instead of 50 %. Level 5 pays back about as fast as a new founding; before it took four times longer. Businesses you already upgraded keep the price you paid as their value in the rankings
- Land costs 300 per m² instead of 500 (before the crop factor), and every parcel yields 25 % more. A field now pays back in 200 to 330 hours instead of 420 to 870. Land you already own keeps its value
- Truck upkeep is €1 per minute instead of €3. Before, an own truck cost two and a half times the freight network per unit hauled and never paid off; now it is cheaper on any distance as long as it drives
- Hotels earn 400 per 10,000 people instead of 300, and a town under 30,000 counts as 30,000. A hotel in a small town used to need 500 hours to pay back, now 200
- Supermarkets sell 25 % above the city price. Before they sold at the city price and earned nothing without fittings
- Traffic is no longer plain grey boxes. Cars, vans, lorries, buses, trains and ships have windows, wheels, doors, bumpers, lights and ribbed cargo bodies, and the paint colour now stays off the glass and tyres
- Bridges carry the same road or rail surface as the way leading onto them, with stone sides down to the ground. They used to be bare grey bands with no markings and no rails
- Small towns have their own city market now. Until now only places above 5000 inhabitants counted, so in a small town you were trading with a city 20 km away while your own town name was on the map
- A city stays in the simulation while somebody owns property there, is delivering to it, or it has a mayor or money in its treasury. Before, driving around could push such a city out and take its prices and treasury with it

- Flat roofs looked like they were covered in big grey polka dots. The bleached puddle marks on them were drawn hard and over a metre wide on a texture that repeats every six metres, so the same spots showed up in a regular grid across every roof. They are faint stains now
- The dairy lost money at base prices: four milk were worth more than the one cheese they became. It now makes two cheese from three milk and pays back in about 120 hours

04.09.2026

Added

Improved

Fixed