It's been in development for a while, but Foundry update 4, Rails & Reactors, is finally here! Factory-making enthusiasts can now enjoy a host of new features and quality-of-life fixes. As a result, even more options are available while pursuing the joy of creating and automating. Here, we'll tell you everything about Foundry update 4, including patch notes, new content, and more.

What's New in Foundry Update 4: Rails & Reactors?

So what is on the factory-building menu in Rails & Reactors? Like any Early Access title update, new content, bug fixes, and some additional polishing.

Construction Drone

?si=10gbqk3WWmjg20CR As detailed in the video above, the Construction Drone removes a whole lot of unnecessary travel time. This is a remote-controlled flying drone built for factory production. Have a conveyor belt that's miles long and is stuck somehow? Dispatch the drone from your character, and you can fly along the line to make a quick fix. Want to customize or add on to the highest reaches of your buildings? Send up the drone, and it can actually build and paint for you. Want an overhead view of how the factory is coming together and where to build next? The drone can deliver a perfect aerial view. While the drone has a maximum range, it doesn't require any power or fuel. Additionally, you can unlock it early on in a brand new game as one of the early science pack 1 research inclusions. That means this handy tool will become your best friend throughout your Foundry journey.

Long Distance Transport Changes

Two of the biggest additions in update 4 are the arrival of trains and changes to shipping pads. With trains, you now have unlimited long-distance transportation possibilities with a completely customizable train-mapping system. This should make long-distance builds and resource transport much more manageable. Meanwhile, shipping pads can now only be used to move items up or down, not in both directions at the same time. This might not be a popular change for those who have built entire factories operating on the shipping pads, working the way they do now. However, the development team has planned for this. Preexisting saves from before Rails & Reactors will have the option to switch their shipping pads to the new behavior when they load their game. However, brand-new games will now have the new shipping pad rules enabled by default.

Additional New Content

As the update's name implies, this one is largely about trains and reactors. Here's a quick rundown of the new reactor buildings that can be built, how they function, and even more features included in Foundry update 4:

• The Xeno Power Plant
  • Made out of multiple modular buildings and built for up to 360MW of power.
• The Fuel Mixer
  • A building that creates the liquid reactor fuel from precursor items and liquids you'll have to manufacture.
• The Xeno Reactor
  • The central piece of the plant, this reactor burns the fuel and generates Energized Reactor Compound (another liquid).
• The Steam Generator
  • A giant heat exchanger that takes the Energized Reactor Compound, mixes it with Water, and generates High-Pressure Steam and Depleted Reactor Compound.
• The High-Pressure Turbine
  • It works just like a normal turbine, but it's significantly larger and produces ten times as much power.
• The Cooling Tower
  • Disperse Exhaust Steam from the High-Pressure Turbine.
• Heavy Caster
  • A new building and replacement for the 96 Casting Machines that are required for a Blast Furnace.
• New Assembly Line Robots
  • More robots to produce and to sell on the galactic market.
• New Neon Decor Buildings
  • New glowing decor opportunities.
• Modular Casting Machine
  • A large modular building to be used in conjunction with the blast furnaces.
• Info Overlay
  • We added a toggleable info overlay that makes it easier to check if everything is working properly in your factory.

This isn't the end of new content and updates for Foundry. The game is still in early access, and the developers have promised that even more changes and updates are on the way. Stay tuned!

Foundry Update 4: Rails & Reactors Patch Notes

In addition to the new content listed above, Rails & Reactors brings a healthy helping of bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements. Here's the full changelog detailing everything that's been added and tweaked:

Gameplay Changes

• Drone miner output is now a fixed rate per minute.
• Drone miners are now connected to the entire ore patch instead of just the voxels in range.
• Xeno and Technum ore patches now spawn closer to the player’s start location.
• Increased character crafting speed.
• Reduced research time and requirements for science pack 1 and 2.
• Station upgrades sped up for tier 1.
• Changed shipping pads so that they cannot move the same item type in both directions simultaneously (you have the option to disable this when you load an old save or when you start a new game).
• Reduced cargo capacity of cargo shuttles, but increased speed.
• Cargo shuttles now need to accelerate before reaching top speed.
• Loaders no longer require power or foundations.
• Reduced power demand for xeno crystal/scrap miners by roughly 50%.
• Increased high voltage cable range to 24 for every building that had a lower range.

UX Improvements

• Polishing pass on power generation building tooltips and screen panels.
• You can now open screen panels from any side of the building by pressing ‘E’.
• Inventory ui frame now has a helper panel to show all available hotkeys.
• Added pipe/power indicator icons to base of fracking tower.
• Improved crafting recipe tooltips.
• Fixed tooltips sometimes being too transparent.
• Improved research frame search functionality to also scan for names of unlocked crafting recipes.
• Improved many of the building’s tooltips and polished tooltip frame.

Graphical Improvements

• Improved texture filtering on all buildings.
• Improved SSAO.
• Added ground cloud shadows.
• Lighting and fog tuning.
• Improved placement effects.
• Improved digging effects.
• Tuned clouds.
• Adjusted workstation LOD distances.
• Adjusted screen panel LOD distances to prevent z fighting.

Audio Improvements

• Improved many of the machine sounds.
• Many of the machine sounds are now limited to prvent cacophony.
• Improved drilling sounds.
• Improved harvesting sounds.
• Improved placement sounds.
• New Ambiences.

Optimizations

• Optimized foundation tile energy system simulation.
• Optimized map rendering.
• Reduced dedicated server memory usage.
• Optimized audio processing.
• Part 1/3 of save file optimization for worlds that have many chunks explored (Part 2 and 3 will be in a future update).
• Optimized shipping pad container rendering.
• Optimized large solar panel rendering.

Bug Fixes

• InfoDB pages now display the correct keybinds.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the game to no longer popup an error message when the player’s system is unable to play the game either due to their video card being unsupported or their system missing the correct C++ runtime.
• Fixed an error that could occur when using an invalid hex code in the color tool frame.
• Fixed an error that could occur when deleting a save file from in game that the player had deleted using windows explorer.
• Fixed issue with getting on ladders on some modular buildings.
• Fixed incorrect mesh on modular building walkways.
• Fixed getting stuck on collision on assembly line producer buildings.
• Fixed placement effect not being played correctly on certain buildings.
• Fixed an error that could occur when trying to load a very large save file.
• Fix bug with xeno tower coverage being incorrect on map.
• Fixed issue with stats displayed on ore vein miner.
• Fixed issue where workstations weren’t taken into account on finance overview for throughput statistics.
• Fixed research queue not showing the proper information when researching infinite researches.
• Fixed incinerator screen panel showing wrong time per item when boosted by workstations.
• Fixed issue where walkways were preventing proper deconstruction raycasts.
• Fixed bug where personal mining drones would not despawn when a character logged off in multiplayer.
• Fixed issue with freight elevators not working properly when colliding with certain types of buildings.
• Fixed issue with freight elevator upgrading when freight elevators are too full of items.
• Fixed error that could occur when using certain symbols in save file names.
• Fixed sun/moon rendering when far from origin.
• Fixed 3rd person rendering of mining laser in multiplayer.
• Fixed desync that could occur when using pumpjacks and workstations.
• Fixed desync that could occur when deconstructing modular buildings.
• Fixed error that could occur when placing conveyors/pipes.

Modding

The crafting/item yaml files are now shipped with the game in the SteamingAssets/Templates folder.