Not everyone is on GC though and all status updates should be copied on Steam too!

It's taking longer simply because noone had a proper estimate on how long such a complex system would take to develop. There is no holdup, it simply takes longer.

Player support and the bugfixes here and there already take away a lot of time that could be spent on missions, so I'm sorry about the silence but I rather spend the available time on development instead of blogs.

I can tell you that the mission templates are done and working (though texts are mostly still missing), the highway and teleport network rework is done for New Virginia, where we will test the whole system for the first time and which will serve as a model for all the other zones.

Currently we're working on a program that will populate the zones with mission structures so we don't have to place hundreds of them by hand.

Once that's done and we have done our internal testing, it will hit the PTS. That will be a mechanic testing, as balancing will be all over the place. After that we will have a balancing phase where we configure the final rewards, NPC difficulties, item quantities, relation gains, and so on.

Then, while you're still testing New Virginia, we'll do Attalica and Daoden, and those 3 will be the initial release of the new system for the live server.

And I will tell you the same and more in a blog once testing begins.

Thank you Zoom! That is exactly what I wanted to hear. Keep them coming every now and then, I am sure it didn't take up too much of your time.

We are all aware and understand that when you start with a new system like changing/improving the missions drastically , things get more complex unexpectedly.

Depends on the scale of the change.

The connection between islands won't change. The only exception will be probably some added parallel connections between some islands.

+1

Most Steam forum comments are negative, and probably offsets the exposure steam gives this game now without further advertising.
More Dev blogs and involvement with the community shows, in a less subjective way, that the game is still alive and growing.

Also I would like to mention Zoom has gone on record saying an email-newsletter would be sent out for the new update to draw past players back in.

It's not smart enough to decorate a new island with everything on its own, if that's what you mean. This one simply helps us to evenly fill the island with mission target structures and the new field terminals. And "evenly fill" is all it does basically. It only looks for walkable terrain, and we still have to finetune all of them so they don't just stupidly stand there in the middle of a clearing. That finetuning part would require some serious AI.

There is a stale market because three people and a turnip play the game and by now even the turnip has completed research and has whatever they need.

What the devs call power creep is actually the only way to maintain industrial content including an active market.

you don't take regular terminals and outposts into consideration?
and for the mission generator, do you calculate teleport and highways too?

Someday's I think anni puts more thought into things then many others attempt and fail at.

He means for est time of completion.  You know so the adequate time bonus's can be correct.

Zoom, your English is better than 90% of America.  Kudos to you.