Aven Colony

Platform(s): PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Genre: Strategy
Publisher: Team17
Developer: Mothership Entertainment
Release Date: July 25, 2017

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'Aven Colony' Content Update Adds New Governor Perks, Challenge/Sandbox maps, And More

by Rainier on Feb. 16, 2018 @ 2:13 p.m. PST

Aven Colony is a city-building and management sim that tells the story of humanity's first settlement of an extrasolar world.

A gripping, rich simulation of an alien colony, Aven Colony allows you to build, customise, and maintain your settlement within Aven Prime, a hostile extra-terrestrial world full of deserts, tundras, and wetlands light-years from earth.

Dive in to an extensive dedicated single-player campaign, where you’ll need to brave Aven Prime’s harsh environments with freezing winters, lightning storms, ice storms, and toxic gas clouds. Prepare for attacks from the local lifeforms, including giant acid-spewing sandworms, “creep spores” that infect your buildings, and “plague spores” that infiltrate your colony and infect your colonists with a deadly plague. You must protect your colony from everything the planet has to throw at them, and shape the future of the survival of the human race.

Featuring a dedicated mission objective system which gradually introduces colony management during the campaign mode, Aven Colony welcomes and enables both novice and experienced players alike to acclimatise to life on Aven Prime. Advance from Colony Governor through the ranks to achieve the prestigious title of Expedition President. There’s also an in-depth sandbox mode with a variety of unique maps to choose from and a full suite of options to customize the game experience.  

All the single player content can also be explored in sandbox mode which allows players to tailor a full suite of options to customise the game experience including editing the starting resources, environmental events, minerals, and much more!

Aven Colony content drop 3 is now live on Steam!

Here's a detailed list of the major new features and changes:

Major Changes

  • New Governor Perks system! Select 1 of 15 perks when starting any new mission (see below for a full list).
  • New Challenge Missions: Boreal Bay, Bluestone Falls, and Icebound Isle. These are very challenging missions designed for experienced players, but can be played at the same 7 difficulty settings as campaign missions.
  • New sandbox maps: Boreal Bay, Bluestone Falls, and Icebound Isle are also now available as sandbox maps.
  • Landing sites: all sandbox maps now have alternate "A" and "B" start locations (for the existing maps, "A" is the previous location, and "B" is the new one)
  • Revised sandbox setup: completely overhauled the sandbox setup UI to better display all possible options, and added a few more sandbox setup options
  • Revised difficulty setup: changed campaign mission difficulty to a list instead of a drop-down. Also, changing campaign mission difficulty now shows what options are impacted (note that unlike sandbox, these cannot be changed individually; all are determined by the difficulty setting)
  • New building: Water Treatment Plant! The Water Treatment Plant recovers an amount of water that scales with the total inhabitants of any directly adjacent residential buildings. Note that each residential building can only be served by 1 Water Treatment Plant.
  • New indicator: battery power! This indicator only appears at the bottom of the screen if your colony has Energy Batteries. It also doubles as a button and can be used to turn Battery Mode on or off.
  • New overlays: Health, Turret Coverage, Lightning Tower Coverage (special thanks to streamer @SlimNasty2013 for suggesting these!)

Governor Perks

  • Arkitect: You have been chosen to build the Arks! Ark Launchers cost 50% as many Nanites, Ark vessels move 25% faster, and Expedition Centers and all remote installations cost 25% fewer Nanites.
  • Boost Engineer: You have an unusual knack for getting the most out of colony boosts. Boosts drain power 33% more slowly and are researched 50% faster.
  • Doctor: You specialize in keeping colonists healthy. Hospitals and Decontamination Units cost 33% fewer Nanites and plague spreads at 50% speed.
  • Drone Tech: You are one with the drones. Construction drones build, repair, & upgrade 20% faster and you recover an additional 10% of the original Nanite cost when recycling a building. Scrubber & Police Drones are also 15% more effective.
  • Electrician: You have a knack for optimizing a colony's electrical inputs. Geothermals, Zorium Plants, and Transceivers generate 6% more power and all electricity-generating structures can be produced for 10% fewer Nanites.
  • Farmer: You have a green thumb. Potash is consumed 10% more slowly, and all farming structures are 6% more productive and cost 5% fewer Nanites.
  • Industrialist: You are a captain of industry. Mills and Chemical Plants have a 20% lower Nanite cost and operate 10% faster.
  • Miner: You specialize in mining. All Mines and Laser Mines recover minerals 8% faster, and Deep Core Mine installations outside your colony are 10% more productive.
  • Pharmacist: You are unusually familiar with enhancement substances. Enhancer Bars consume enhancers 30% more slowly and cost 40% fewer Nanites to build. Enhancers are also manufactured 15% faster.
  • Politican: You are unusually popular with everyone. Purpose morale is 1 point higher, Freedom morale penalties are 20% lower, and you can win elections with only 45% of the vote instead of 50%.
  • Polymath: You're multi-talented! This perk allows you to select 2 other perks. Unfortunately, you're also unpopular: this reduces Purpose morale in your colony by 10. You must achieve the rank of High Commander or higher in the campaign to unlock this perk,
  • Scientist: You are unusually talented with technological research. Research Centers and Artifact Containment Units cost 40% fewer Nanites, and your research efforts are 20% faster.
  • Trader: You have a knack for trade. Trade Hubs cost 40% fewer Nanites, trade ships are 20% faster, and the maximum Nanite value of trade deals with remote settlements is 50% higher.
  • Warrior: You are skilled in the arts of war. Plasma Turrets, Tier-2 Expedition Centers, and remote missile batteries cost 35% less to build. Plasma Turrets, remote missile batteries, and Tier-2 expedition ships fire 25% faster.
  • Xeno Botanist: You have an advanced degree in extraterrestrial genetics! All farming structures are 6% more productive when growing alien crops, and you are able to process foods made from alien crops 7% faster.

Here's a full list of the new governor perks:

Note that all Perks that give Nanite discounts also increase the construction speed of the related structures by the same percentage (i.e. 10% discount on a building = build it 10% faster).

Additional Changes

  • Improved frame rates for larger colonies
  • Mills and Chemical Plants now get a 75% production bonus at tier 2 instead of 60%
  • Mills now cost 2 fewer Nanites and use 2 less power
  • Imploding plague microbes now attempt to infect 1 colonist in any neighboring tile that has inhabitants or workers; this makes plague infections somewhat more challenging
  • Fixed a broken mission objective related to trading Entari Oatmeal in Sandy Gulch
  • It's now possible to delete unassigned custom trade contracts
  • The "Go To" button on notifications now zooms out if needed
  • The "Go To" button on notifications now properly exits cinematic camera mode
  • Fixed issues with Ctrl-key highlighting for Nanite Processors toggling values on secondary Processors instead of setting them
  • Ctrl-key highlighting now works for selecting/deselecting enhancers on all Enhancer Bars in the colony simultaneously
  • Ark ships now work even when their Ark Bay is out of power
  • Plasma Turrets no longer depend on a Research Center before they can be built
  • Maximum Stadium Entertainment morale boost reduced from 36 to 34
  • Maximum Earth History Center Entertainment morale boost reduced from 30 to 28
  • There's now a unique icon on the selection pane when a building is shut down
  • Sandbox options now have a higher amount of resources at the highest "Starting Resources" setting
  • Improved target prioritization for plasma turrets -- now puts a lower priority on shards and sandworms
  • There are now 5 different resource levels available in Sandbox instead of just 3
  • Idle artifacts no longer say "Active (0%)" on the progress bar; they say "Idle" instead
  • Fix for a rare bug with the Space Elevator capsule being seen in the wrong location
  • The "Load Game" dialog now states whether the selected save is from a campaign, challenge, or sandbox map
  • The "Mission Settings" pane in the Colony Control panel now states the current governor perk
  • For sandbox missions, the "Mission Settings" pane in the Colony Control panel now states the landing site ("A" or "B")
  • The old "Colonist Overlay" is now the "Morale Overlay" (since all the functionality related to health & plague infections has been moved into the new "Health Overlay")
  • The productivity bonuses from multiple enhancer bars no longer stack
  • Fixed a rare stability issue with renaming Ark vessels
  • Lots of visual improvements to the outer menus
  • Fixed lots of small localization issues

Thank you for your support and for bearing with us as we work continuously to make Aven Colony an even better game.

Key Features

  • A rich simulation of an extraterrestrial colony, with resource gathering and management, technological research, food cultivation and manufacturing, trade, morale, social policies, and more.
  • Dozens of different buildings with unique functions and impacts.
  • A fully functional day/night cycle tied into Aven Prime’s seasons.
  • The world of Aven Prime fights back against human colonization with The Creep, an alien infection that can destroy your colony over time.
  • Environmental challenges including lightning storms, dust devils, giant sandworms, plague spores, deadly toxic gas emissions from geothermal vents, and shard storms.
  • Acquire alien artifacts and use their powers while learning the story of the civilization that once inhabited Aven Prime.

Aven Colony is available for £24.99 / $29.99 / 29,99€ in both digital and physical formats from select retailers.


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