The Challenge & More
Everyone plays the same desert map for 20 years and is ranked on one leaderboard. Wind behind a full line is turned down instead of cutting towns off, turbines carry day markings, and a big colony runs six times faster at 400x.
One map, one leaderboard
The Challenge is a new door on the start screen. Everyone plays the same map, Teksas, for 20 years, with the same weather and the same towns settling at the same time. The highest score wins.
Your score is the Record, the same score every other scenario keeps. There is no second way of counting points.
- Pick a player name the first time you open it.
- During a run the header shows your Record and your place against the field at the same point of the term.
- The end screen shows your place, how your run compares with the field, and the top ten.
- A Challenge run has its own save and never takes one of your five slots.
Ranked on the Record
The Challenge window shows the map, how it works and the leaderboard. Only your best run counts, and you can start up to 40 runs a week. Runs with impossible scores are not ranked.
The board opens empty with this update. The first score on it could be yours.
- Spilled power now costs points, in every scenario, and only power delivered to customers earns them.
- Scores are lower than before: about 15% on Standard, and a run can drop one grade.
- Runs finished before this update are kept but not compared with new ones.
Teksas
Teksas is a desert at the latitude of Texas. There is no water anywhere, so no dams, no geothermal and no plants that need cooling water. The colony starts on one regular gas turbine, the same one you can build, and nothing is developed: solar is earned like everything else.
Winters are mild with a few hard frosts. Summers are long and hot, so the towns heat little and run air conditioning hard in the afternoon, when the sun is highest.
- Strong sun and a fair wind on the open plains.
- A carbon price arrives inside the term and keeps rising to its end.
- A second town settles in the second or third year.
A full line turns wind down, not towns off
Wind and solar that pushed the line they export over past its rating used to trip it and disconnect the towns downstream. Now they are turned down to what the line can carry, and other plants make up the difference. Each one shows a line full mark, and its card says why.
A colony built as separate grids, with no line between them, runs each grid on its own plants at its own price. A town far from the rest no longer needs its station set to Must run to stay lit.
- The control room’s merit order shows the largest grid and names the price on the others.
- While protection holds a line open, each side runs on its own plants until it recloses.
- The plan for the next two days no longer counts on wind a full line cannot carry.
Turbines with day markings
Wind turbine blades are drawn as airfoils and carry the markings real machines wear by day: red and white bands at the tip, a single red tip, or none. Some towers have a red band a third of the way up or green rings at the foot. Each machine turns at its own pace, so a farm drifts in and out of step.
Onshore turbines stand on a round foundation in a little gravel instead of a concrete plate, and the rotor faces the way the nacelle points.
- Plant lights and their megawatt figures are drawn over everything, so a rotor no longer hides them.
- Cloud shadows are heaped cumulus, and steam and smoke rise as plumes instead of stacks of discs.
Faster at 400x, and weather fronts
Asked for 400x, a forty year colony ran at about 20x, because the game only had a few milliseconds of each frame for the simulation. The simulation now also runs while the frame is being painted: about 130x on the same colony, at the same frame rate. A run also opens on a finished map instead of one still drawing itself.
In new colonies the weather crosses the map as fronts. Wind and cloud reach the far side of the map up to about two and a half hours after the near side, so farms far apart no longer rise and fall at the same moment.
- The Load & Supply bay in the header opens the full chart.
- A Discord link is on the start screen, on the site and in the About window.
- Deleting a colony in Saved games now takes it off the start screen at once.
Everything in 0.9.4
Every change in this update, as it is listed on the changelog.
- Challenge: everyone plays Teksas, a dry desert map, for 20 years and is ranked on a leaderboard.
- Teksas has no rivers, lakes or sea, so no dams, no geothermal and no plants that need cooling water. Its colony starts on one regular gas turbine with nothing developed, in hot summers and mild winters.
- Pick a player name for the Challenge leaderboard.
- A Challenge run scores the Record, the same as any other run.
- During a Challenge run the header shows your Record and your place.
- The Challenge card shows a picture of the map.
- A Challenge run has its own save and never takes one of your five slots.
- Plants turned down by a full line show a line full icon.
- Each separate grid has its own price. The merit order in the control room shows the largest grid and names the price on the others.
- In new colonies the weather crosses the map as fronts. Wind and cloud reach the far side up to about two and a half hours after the near side.
- Wind turbine blades carry day markings: red and white bands, a red tip, or none. Some towers have a red band or green rings.
- Turbines side by side turn at slightly different speeds, so a wind farm no longer moves in step.
- Discord: a link on the start screen, on the site and in the About window.
- While protection holds a line open, each side of it runs on its own plants until it recloses.
- Asked for 400x, a forty year colony now runs at about 130x instead of 20x, at the same frame rate.
- A run opens on a finished map instead of one still drawing itself.
- Onshore wind turbines stand on a round foundation in gravel instead of a concrete plate.
- Plant lights and their megawatt figures are drawn over everything, so a rotor or a building in front no longer hides them.
- Cloud shadows, steam and smoke look like clouds instead of flat circles.
- The Load & Supply bay in the header opens the full chart, and so does the whole Load & Supply card on the sideboard.
- Runs finished before this update are kept but not compared with new ones.
- Saves from earlier versions still open. A colony saved by this version does not open in 0.9.3-a.
- Wind and solar overloading the line they export over no longer disconnect customers. They are turned down to what the line can carry, and other plants make up the difference.
- A town on a separate grid, with no line to the rest of the colony, is powered by its own plants. They no longer need Must run to keep it supplied.
- Spilled power now lowers your score.
- Only power delivered to customers earns points. Scores are lower than before, about 15% on Standard, and a run can drop one grade.
- Deleting, renaming or importing a colony in Saved games now updates the start screen at once.
Play 0.9.4 now
No account and nothing to install. Your run is saved in your browser.