Upgrade

Several buildings can be improved from their basic variants by the use of **upgrades**, which can unlocks a wide variety of additional capabilities.

## Types

For Logistics buildings, most of these upgrades are simply a one time deal that increases their capacity to double the original amount. For example, this generally affects the Warehouse, Port, and their variants. They will also get extra workers assigned to carry resources to it.

Certain other buildings can be upgraded once to unlock additional capabilities. This includes the Shipyard (which gets a selection of Steamships) and Cleaner (which can remove all pollution on a tile, instead of just lowering it to Slightly Polluted).

For plant based field buildings, they can be improved with irrigation. This can double the production per tile and is quite effective, although note that this will not affect the storage capacity if the field is underutilised.

Another type of upgrade is the chain line of upgrades for buildings related to Peeps, or producing Peep quality of life resources. For example, the Baker can be improved up to Level 3 to gradually increase its production, and then can be upgraded several more times to make Good Meals. This also applies to the Smoothie Maker, Weaver and Tailor, and the Market Place. Meanwhile, the Hut can be upgraded to the House and Apartment. The exception is the Mill, which can be automated. On top of these lines of upgrades, Automation or Filtering can also be applied where applicable.

Even Roads can be upgraded to make travel faster for Peeps, provide power distribution, and decorate the area for a happiness boost. Also, while certain buildings like the Elevator do not technically have upgrades, they may get a bonus from an adjacent "Road with Power Line upgrade". Another special combination is that roads with power and decoration gain small light sources during the planet's night-time.

Most raw resource extraction and industrial production buildings in general can be upgraded with Automation or Filtering. These upgrades are mutually exclusive and require Power. Much as expected from the names of these upgrades, Automation increases production rate while reducing Peep worker count, while Filtering blocks all pollution whatsoever produced by the building (it may still have the Gloom trait to reduce happiness however). These have different cosmetic appearances; Automation installs a little robotic arm/crane on the top, while filtration caps any smokestacks off with a dimpled dome.

Finally, the Whale Charmer can be upgraded to search for a conclusion to the story of the game.

Many buildings cannot be upgraded, but a sample of notable ones includes Power Generators, the Launch Pad and Airship Hangar (the other vehicle production buildings; only the shipwright gets an upgrade), Library and Research Institute, Hubs, Wells (although in some ways the Water production of the Desalination Plant can help), and the Road Layer.

## Other effects

Apart from the main effects described above, sometimes upgrading a building will change other qualities about it. For example this might be increasing the Gloom/Hard Work unhappiness effects, or adding extra worker slots. Most buildings have the same tile requirements as their original, but Apartments add a restriction and cannot be placed on Swamp tiles.

### Recipes and downgrading

It is not possible to downgrade a building without demolishing it. However, upgradeable production buildings have a "Recipe" button that will allow it to function as a building of a lower level. For example, this allows the production of Meals from a Kitchen IV that would otherwise normally produce Good Meals.

## Resource cost

Most upgrades require resources of a more advanced technology than the building originally required. For example, to upgrade to a Warehouse II requires Glass. Other upgrades might require Chemicals, Electronics, Gadgets, or Astrobaleenium.

Resource costs are cumulative. If a building can be upgraded multiple times, then resources for each upgrade will be required in order to achieve the same level of building. It is possible to construct buildings in their upgraded form without manually going through all levels of upgrade. On PC, this is done by ctrl+clicking the building's button in the menu. This is especially useful for the higher levels of peep consumable resources, which can have as many as 6 upgrades. Note that this will require all resource requirements for all individual levels of upgrade to be delivered at once.

If the building is demolished or the upgrade is swapped, all upgrade costs (including previous levels) will always be returned as part of a resource pile, although if there is sufficient storage space in a Warehouse, the upgrading peep may immediately return this to the storage building. Likewise, if a production building changes the type of resource it outputs, the old output resource will be dumped out as a resource pile for the Peeps to collect.