The Fixes Behind the Features: Saves, Stalls, Missing Art and Startup Repairs
OCTOBER 12-26, 2026 / DEVELOPMENT UPDATE
New features attract attention, but a colony also needs to load, save, find its work and display the item the player selected. Much of October's development addresses those fundamentals. The fixes are specific to reproduced problems; they should be read as targeted repairs rather than a promise that every mod combination is now error-free.
Different stalls had different causes
The fishing wait loop involved work selection accepting a job before a usable rod was available. The salvage loop involved the same kind of mismatch for a hammer. Food Rot involved cleaning replacing compost jobs and rot entering mixed hauling batches. Those are separate paths with separate repairs, even when the visible symptom is a pawn standing still or repeating an unhelpful action.
The .143 new-game fix is different again. Learning Helper positioning used a play-interface path while the game was still on the entry interface. The resulting cast failure could prevent scenario setup windows from drawing. Existing saves used the play interface and could load, which is why successful loading alone did not clear the new-game problem.
Save identities need to stay unique
The caravan-injury fix removes stale treatment references without recreating healed injuries. The precept and relic work assigns proper save IDs and retains each dedicated relic's original item. The .132 event-letter correction gives new offers native identities and repairs affected saved letters while retaining archive and event state.
Radio's original building name required a definition correction in .135. The compatibility path maps old radio, blueprint and frame names, normalizing references during loading instead of editing the source save file. These repairs aim to preserve identity, not replace missing content with a different item that merely looks similar.
Recover the missing pieces
The .140 audit compares 21 archives and recoverable project conversations. It restores interface icons, ten boss crest and torque textures, trader purchase rules, cabinet storage, a custom rack room bonus, machining-bench artwork and work-priority help. Five category icons join the update. Intentional exclusions and the current balance remain.
The following .141 repair moves new faction-icon loading to main-thread startup. The .142 update adds tree height and Complex Furniture tool-storage access. Earlier apparel work audits 77 wearables, followed by a drawing-worker correction and body-specific belt adjustments. Each correction has its own scope; an icon audit is not proof that every animation has been inspected in Unity.
Performance without a benchmark claim
Roof searches, pest handling and seasonal visuals have received targeted performance work. The .133 tree pass spreads visual updates over ticks and removes repeated graphics computations. No supported before-and-after frame-rate benchmark was supplied for this website update, so the site does not attach a percentage speedup to that work.
The .145 route fix rejects non-surface endpoints before ground pathfinding, preventing orbital settlements from entering that path. It preserves valid surface routes and skips a failed candidate without abandoning the entire simulation pulse. Native fixtures and package checks are useful evidence. The final acceptance remains a real colony: start a scenario, load an existing save, run the affected work, save under a new name and reload.