NeroColonies

Storage and work: a colony keeps its goods in Storage Crates, building materials stay in storage until they are used, the colony eats from what it stores, and every Neran trade now does its job in the world. Existing worlds load: depots already standing register as storage the first time their area loads. Client and server must both run 0.8.0 (new block, a new storage menu layout and a fourth beacon module slot).

Added

• Storage Crate. A new block where a colony keeps its goods. Each crate in the claim adds 27 slots of colony storage and opens onto the same shared stock as every Colony Depot (which now adds 18). Crafted from a chest, two barrels and two iron ingots.
• Storage pages. Colony storage can now grow to 270 slots; the crate and depot screen shows one page of 54 at a time with page buttons.
• All four module types fit in the beacon. The beacon has four module slots (was three), so Speed, Efficiency, Range and Capacity can all be installed at once. Speed modules in the beacon now make construction faster.
• Nerans build by hand, and nobody stands idle. While Nerans are at a building site they lay the building themselves, one block per stroke, at the same overall rate the colony builds at (the colony only places blocks on its own when nobody is on site, such as when the area is unloaded). Every adult without a trade of its own, the founders included, goes to the site as a labourer, and when nothing is being built a labourer gathers wood around the claim. Nerans work once a second, and the work swing now shows on 26.3 too.
• Livestock breeding. Beastkeepers, and Farmers between rounds of their field, breed the colony's animals: two grown animals of a kind inside the claim are fed their breeding food from colony storage, up to 12 head of a kind. Tamed animals and the colony's guardians are left alone.
• Job stations make real workers. A Neran without a trade who works a job station works as the trade that station belongs to: at a farm or hydroponics station it farms around the station, and at a refinery station it digs a quarry right beside the station. A Farmer with no seed in storage cuts wild grass for it.
• /nerocolonies colony workers lists what each loaded Neran of the colony you stand in is working as, its job, workplace distance, part of the day and status.
• Nerans really work. Every trade now does its job in the world. Farmers lay out and keep a 9 x 9 field near their workplace (water in the middle, grass and dirt tilled to farmland), sow it from the colony's wheat, carrot, potato and beetroot seeds, and harvest and replant it. Foresters walk to the nearest tree in the claim, fell all of it, replant a sapling and gather the saplings, sticks and apples it drops. Miners dig a 5 x 5 quarry with a spiral stair down its rim, up to 16 deep, breaking only blocks in the new nerocolonies:quarryable tag. Builders work the cell being laid at the building site. Haulers carry food from storage to the beacon's supply slots when rations run short and take stored tools to Nerans that lack them. Cooks cook raw food in storage (and bake bread from wheat). Toolsmiths make missing trade tools from their real cost and hand them over. Researchers refine what the next research is missing (sand to glass, raw ores to ingots, cane to paper, paper and leather to books). Quartermasters walk the stores and merge part stacks to free slots. Every drop goes to colony storage, and every block change follows the colony's land rules.

Fixed

• Cottages and other homes now raise housing wherever they stand. The housing count only looked 6 blocks below to 12 above the beacon, so a home the colony built on lower or higher ground in the claim never counted. Homes in the colony's own finished buildings now count at any height.
• Housing stopped updating in a busy colony. The housing count read the claim a couple of chunks a second and started over whenever a building finished, so a colony finishing buildings faster than that (Speed modules, a claim widened by Range modules) never finished counting and its housing stayed where it was. A count under way now finishes and the next starts straight after, and a whole count takes about ten seconds however big the claim is.

Changed

• A colony needs somewhere to keep its goods. A colony with no Storage Crate or Colony Depot has no storage: placing one is its first need, "Give needed items" asks for one, and the Starter Works wait for it. Existing colonies without a crate or depot need one placed before they can store anything; their goods stay safe in the colony's store meanwhile.
• Materials stay in storage until they are used. A building no longer takes all its materials at once: it takes each cycle's share as its blocks go up, and the rest stays in the crates where you can take it back out. Taking materials out makes the need show again and pauses the Starter Works (later buildings drop to the slow scrap rate) until they are returned. Builds already under way that had paid up front keep running.
• Breaking a crate or depot no longer strands or loses goods. The goods are packed into the colony's other crates and depots, and only what no longer fits drops where the block stood (all of it, if it was the last one).
• The beacon screen opens on the Needs tab, now the first tab in the rail.
• Food in storage feeds the colony. Food in the colony's Storage Crates and depots now counts towards its food: each cycle the colony tops its rations up from storage to eight cycles' worth, staples first, keeping 16 of each crop its Farmers plant back as seed (the rest stays in the crates). The needs list counts stored food, and "Give needed items" now takes food for the food need and puts it in storage. The export buffer is never eaten from.
• Real work replaces the dice roll while a Neran is working. A trade's outputs are still rolled on the colony cycle for any Neran that has not gathered for real in the last two cycles, so a colony nobody is near keeps producing; a Neran that is harvesting, felling, digging or refining is not paid twice. While a Hauler or Toolsmith is at work, tools are carried over by hand instead of being issued on the colony cycle, and a Toolsmith-made tool now costs the tool's real recipe (an iron hoe is two iron ingots and two sticks) rather than one iron ingot.