Aven Colony Content Drop 1 brings hover cars and a space elevator

Mothership Entertainment has released the Aven Colony Content Drop 1 update which adds a load of new content.

The rather good space city builder has a load of new content available for free. The update includes the addition of hover cars, 11 new building, a space elevator, and a new sandbox map called Serpent Isle. This is just the start according to the developers.

“As we go forward, we want to make sure that we focus our development on new maps, new buildings, and new gameplay modes that add as much value as possible. It should be clear from the new features listed above that everything we’ve added fills a gameplay hole or otherwise addresses key gameplay issues while also giving you tools to make your colonies look even cooler.”

Hover cars are introduced via hover car stations allowing work sites and residential area to be further apart. Each station can connect with up to five other stations which will shorten commutes. They also give a Commute morale boost to the surrounding area.

The space elevator is a huge structure with a carbon-nanotube-based wire that extends into orbit. This large structure supports immigration and emigration. Its capacity can also be increased with an Immigration Center.

New decorations are also available including 4 enclosed atrium buildings and 4 free standing outdoor buildings including fountains, obelisks, crystals, and mini-parks.

Along with this Aven Colony content drop comes changes to the game which are outlined in the notes below.

• Significantly modified temporal antialiasing to cause much less blurring, especially when close to buildings
• Lots of optimizations that should significantly reduce the amount of hitching with large colonies and improve large-colony performance overall
• Added a new “Decorations” submenu and moved the Park into this submenu (from “Services”)
• The “Spaceports” menu has been renamed to “Ships & Vehicles,” and includes the new Hovercar Station
• Made Vanaar and Sandy Gulch in the campaign slightly more difficult (this does not affect saved games, only new games on those maps)
• Improved the look of the Employment overlay: now shows green arrows in most cases, or red if a worker’s commute is causing a morale penalty. Also dramatically improved the look of this overlay. It also shows connections between hovercar garages in purple if any colonists use them in a commute.
• Improved the Commute overlay: this now also shows the red lines from the Employment overlay
• Improved the effect when you recycle a Prometheus Lander
• Sending an expedition out to investigate a distress signal which later turns out to be rebels no longer leaves you with “{0}” and “{1}” in the next
• Crowding morale should now be a slightly more serious problem at most difficulty settings — but MUCH easier to addresss using hovercars!
• The Morale graphs in the Statistics panel were 50% too small; they are now the proper size
• The Bar & Grill now has a smaller morale effect in general and properly reduces the morale effect further at tier 1
• The Earth History Center is now more expensive and has a reduced morale effect
• The Park is now slightly more expensive to build
• The VR Center’s morale effect has been reduced slightly
• Habitats and Skyscrapers now use slightly less power and a Tier-2 Skyscraper is slightly more expensive
• Laser mines now use less power and no longer reduce air quality as much as they did previously
• Fixed an issue where holding Ctrl to highlight buildings while dragging a building for placement could cause buildings to temporarily disappear when you released Ctrl
• Creeps & tentacles now vanish properly the moment a building begins its destruction sequence
• Added more specialized POI marker types for expeditions: rebels, splinter groups, creep nests, and plague nests