1.17: Tech that builds plants, and new ways to grow

Dev diary by the Lakeside Games team, 20 October 2026.

TL;DR

• •Changed: every tech now improves your plants. Profit-margin and sale-price techs became cheaper labour, fewer inputs or more output, fitted to each sector. Techs you own switched over automatically, with nothing lost.
• •Changed: a tech's cash price is now about one game year of what it saves or earns your corporation. Each tech card shows its value per turn and how many turns it takes to pay back.
• •Changed: research is faster. Tech R&D costs are 20% lower and R&D spending earns about 20% more points.
• •Removed: the R&D ecosystem modifier. R&D points depend only on what you spend and how well you pay your staff.
• •New: Split rival plants is back. Marketing strength sets both how many plants you can take and your odds, and the plants you win move over intact.
• •New: very large corporations pay a management overhead that grows with their total plant count. Corporations with 300 plants or fewer pay nothing.
• •New: a What grows this corporation panel on the corporation overview shows where building more plants pays and which other levers you have.
• •Changed: plants only pay wages for the staff they have and the run they actually make, restart gently after a stop, and scale back when they lose money on their output.
• •Changed: the flat fee every business paid since 10 October is gone, and staff costs and recipes were rebalanced so a normally run business earns 15 to 25%.
• •New: extraction contracts from tender to active concession, faster prospecting with finder's rights, and a Freight Only strategy for logistics companies.
• •New: buy a corporation and keep it as a subsidiary, mothball or reactivate every sector at once, and choose what the NPP running your corporation may do.
• •New: separate income-tax groups, stock holding terms with capital gains tax after 48 turns, and live multi-seat races show how many votes you need for your next seat.

The story

This release started with a player's question: what actually grows my corporation? Under the plants economy the honest answer was "building plants, and not much else." Techs still paid out in profit-margin points from the old company model, their prices had nothing to do with what they were worth to you, an R&D modifier you could not influence moved your research up and down, and the one way to take ground from a rival had been switched off.

1.17 rebuilds that around plants. Techs change what your plants cost to run and how much they make, and each one tells you when it pays for itself. Splits return as a real transfer of plants. The biggest corporations carry a growing management cost so the largest players cannot simply snowball. A new panel on your corporation overview puts it all in one place with your own numbers.

The rest of the release continues the market recovery: plants stop paying for crews and inputs they do not use, prices let go of old shortages, trade counts in full, and a normally run business makes a normal profit again.

Tech and growth

Techs improve your plants

• •Profit-margin techs now give a plant effect that fits their sector: cheaper labour for service and media sectors, fewer inputs for industry, energy, agriculture and defence, and more output for technology, extraction and the Corporate lane.
• •Output sale price techs now raise plant output by the same percentage.
• •Total plant output from techs is capped at +12% and total input savings at 30%. Marketing strength techs are unchanged.
• •Four upgrades now pay off under plants: build cost upgrades also speed up construction, price realization works on cost-plus sectors, the dominance shield cuts the dominance toll on new capacity, and logistics strength cuts shipping costs.
• •The Research position panel shows your plant output and input bonuses instead of tech margin, counting only techs that still apply.
• •A tech's plant effects apply in its own decade and the one after. Older owned techs are now marked Effect expired on the Tech tab instead of silently stopping.
• •A completed decade no longer offers its specialization tier on either track.

Tech prices follow what a tech earns

• •A tech's cash price is what it saves or earns your plants per turn, times 48 turns. Large and small corporations wait about the same time for a tech to pay back.
• •Techs without a running effect, such as build discounts, market shields and new production methods, cost 5% of a day's gross revenue instead of 15%. The minimum price for very small corporations is unchanged.

Split rival plants

• •Available again on a rival's sector page.
• •Your marketing strength against the rival's sets the share at stake: 1% of their plants at equal strength, up to 20% when yours is twice theirs.
• •Your marketing strength against the rival's also sets the chance of success, between 5% and 95%.
• •Plants you win move to you intact, and the rival always keeps at least one. The cash and marketing strength you commit are spent either way.
• •Computer-run corporations use the same rule when they attack.

Management overhead

• •Corporations with more than 300 plants pay a margin charge on every sector, rising by a fixed step each time their plant count doubles. Most corporations never pay it, and state-owned corporations are exempt.
• •The sector page lists it as Management overhead in the margin breakdown.

See what grows your corporation

• •The CEO's corporation overview lists sectors that sell everything they make (with a link to build there), sectors that make more than the market takes, and sectors whose output is not reaching buyers so you can fix freight first. It also points to techs and splits.

Plants and the market

• •Normal businesses make a healthy profit again: the flat fee of about 8% of income is gone, and staff costs and some recipes were rebalanced.
• •Plants pay wages only for the staff they have, and staff and pay a crew only for the run they actually make. New plants hire for their current output instead of a full crew.
• •A plant that made nothing last turn restarts at a quarter of its run instead of paying full inputs and wages for nothing to sell.
• •A plant that keeps losing money on its output makes less of it.
• •Prices that stayed high after a shortage ended come down in two steps, and a country's commodity price moves part of the way to its new level each turn instead of swinging.
• •Goods that ship abroad count fully in each market, imports cost the exporter's own price, spare exports reach buyers who are short, and unsold export surplus lowers the home price.
• •Over-building a good far past what the world wants now costs sharply more, and a producer with over half the world's supply can no longer undercut the market.
• •Commodity shortages on commodity pages and the heat map now count imports.
• •Companies fill open jobs within a few turns when people are looking for work, and well-run state companies are as efficient as private ones.
• •Entertainment services are no longer a traded commodity. Entertainment media now sells advertising, and companies no longer buy advertising as a production input.
• •Retail bank charters pay labour and upkeep only on capacity that produces services.

Computer-run companies

• •They stop founding businesses outside their field, stop opening plants into full markets, shrink unused plants faster, and sell plants outside their industry to a company in that industry.
• •Logistics companies build freight capacity much faster during a critical freight shortage.
• •On autopilot, a corporation adds capacity in small steps and only where a build should pay back.

Corporations

• •Buy a corporation and keep it as a subsidiary, and appoint an NPP CEO to a subsidiary with none.
• •Corporations on autopilot or under an NPP caretaker get a What the NPP may do card: pick an attitude or set each action yourself.
• •Mothball all and Reactivate all in the CEO office bulk bar.
• •Freight Only strategy for logistics companies.
• •Today's run says Short of workers when that is why a plant is idle.
• •Share purchases explain why you cannot buy, CEO allowances count open orders and pending offers, and share trades no longer shrink a company's share totals.
• •Bond buybacks show in your company's money history, and private company profit shows in the right currency.

Extraction

• •Extraction contracts run from tender to active concession, with tenders explaining who pays whom and the capacity behind each percentage.
• •Geological surveys take half the time, companies can run six at once, odds are higher, and a company that strikes a deposit gets a royalty-free contract over it.
• •Mines dig what their plants can actually produce, leases no longer cap digging, and mines can grow into wider shortages.

Politics, money and government

• •Income tax is split into separate groups with personal income tax, and the National Budget page explains them.
• •Shares held directly have Short Term and Long Term Holdings. After 48 turns, dividends and gains use capital gains tax instead of income tax.
• •Currency pegs are defended with reserves, and chairs can preview FX defence costs and set a spending limit. QE and QT show bond availability and costs before you submit.
• •In live multi-seat races, your row shows how many votes you need for your next seat and how many you can lose.
• •Commons by-elections contest every seat the departing MP's bloc held.
• •Federation breakups and Russian reforms get a real vote, and breakups no longer stall on power plants or forces without a home base.
• •Supreme Court justices get a Justice Office link, upcoming cases, career history and two achievements.
• •Parliamentary government confidence carries forward through a new government instead of resetting.
• •Poverty and regional employment respond to the laws you have funded.
• •Player-funded boosts and attacks show their action and fund costs before you commit.
• •Shipped player suggestions are announced on Discord, and profiles count implemented suggestions.

Interface

• •The Battleground view is back on the presidential map, and candidate names have more room.
• •Union pages are laid out like corporation pages.
• •State and region dropdowns are alphabetical, and the mobile menu puts Map first.
• •Wiki pages and player guides describe the current rules.

Behind the scenes

A new market system is being tested alongside the current one without changing anything players see. Turns got faster Treasury coupon payments, and a lot of duplicated code was shared or removed with no change in behaviour.