Update #25 is here and it's a huge upgrade to the alert system (previously "You will be heard" but now majorly expanded), immediate and easy access to exactly which enemy agents will hear an attack from any give location, a revamp of the Injury Time math, a rebuild of the character dialog to address a ton of nagging issues and improve light and more more more.
This is perhaps one of the biggest QoL updates we've released yet and we hope you find it helpful!
If you're enjoying the pace of updates and improvements, please consider leaving a review and sharing the game with a friend.
We've slipped on our posted roadmap schedule, missing November with Proc-Gen but that milestone, and Custom Difficulty are both circling, very close now.
Movement Alerts
Whenever you are considering a move, you can now see a new set of alerts. Joining the previously available alert for "You will be heard" we now offer "You may be seen" and "Camera will spot you". This new layer of details - including exactly where in your move path you'll hit the issue - makes it much easier to make movement decisions without worrying about checking every guard in the area against your path. In the case where you are going to be spotted or heard by an enemy agent, a yellow icon appears under their hover now, making it clearly exactly who-will-what. This is a great upgrade for the noise system which needed this before and is just as useful for the new vision alert.
Overwatch is pending some finalized code and testing but will join the alert set soon with "You will be shot!"
Who Will Hear an Attack?
Update #25 now exposes exactly which enemies will hear your attack with a new yellow under-hover icon. The upgraded icon also appears in the bottom left of the screen with your weapon, how many enemies will hear your attack (from the current position or from your set movement destination). This exposes a very useful set of details very quickly as you play and can help you make faster and more accurate tactical decisions about when and where to make your attacks.
In addition to knowing the number, you can now easily see exactly who as you drag the movement destination around and the yellow alerts come and go under specific enemies. Aitana is just around the corner from these two with her UAR primed - they're going to hear it, but not sure it is going to matter.
Better Injury Time Calculations
We've taken a moment to revamp the calculations used to determine how much Injury Time you have in the safehouse after taking hits.
First off, if a hit is less than 20% of your max HP, it now can never cause any Injury Time. This is a good starting point as grazing hits aren't going to cost you. Once you're over 20%, the Injury Time is going to scale pretty directly based on Damage and % of your max HP. This is a big help in making the injury time feel right - take a big hit, get more time. There was too much RNG in the old system, and if the dice fell the wrong way, even a small hit could end up with more Injury Time than a big hit that rolled low.
In addition, any time you get smacked with a Critical Hit or get knocked to Bleeding Out status, you'll get an elevated Injury Time roll, but it is still based on the damage caused compared to your max HP.
Spiking Requires Scan 2/2
We've improved the hover on the button for Spiking CPU and APU to include an important rules clarification. To Spike, you must have destroyed all the IC with an Attack program and the Scan Level must be 2/2. We'll keep working to improve this but the hover at least can now point you in the right direction!
Dialog Character Revamp
With Update #25, we've made some important changes to the rendering of characters during dialog. We've taken the time to tune up the lighting stage for the characters while not making any huge changes to the setup.
However, the underlying change of rendering technique resolves a lot of issues that were cropping up with the system. in short, we no longer render the characters with the main, perspective camera which fixes issues like:
- No longer rendered by a perspective camera, so they no longer start to look stretched out on wider screens.
- It is impossible for characters to clip into level geometry sometimes.
- If the main mission camera takes on odd rotations, the characters in dialog are not negatively effected.
- The characters are no longer affected by level lighting, which avoids any scenarios where their lighting was really out of band.
Improved Combat / Matrix Logs
With Update #25, we've improved the logging for regular missions and hacking. They now have a bit more space between every line and have stopped truncating log lines so that you aren't losing out on half the valuable data. Thanks to the players who F10'd this, it's a nice incremental improvement with more to come.
BioScan Field Fix
We fixed a bug with the BioScan Field security device where it would still cause a Tally increase and post security events even after you disabled it by hacking. That's a painful kick in the butt for your hacker who worked hard to silence that thing. Now fixed!
v1.1.19 - 12/1/2023
- Improved alerts system matching the "You will be heard" alerted
- "You may be seen" warning when you are crossing into a guard's line of sight
- "Camera will spot you" warning when you cross into a Camera or Radar Array line of sight
- Enemies who will hear this attack number on weapon in bottom left now matched by alert icon in enemy hover
- Updated icon for "enemies who will hear this attack" to separate from "movement will be heard" icon
- Improved injury time calculation based off damage (no injury for 20% or less, less random results, critical hits and high damage yield more injury time)
- Fixed issue with Covering Fire 5th upgrade node having 2 effects, added new upgrade node
- Fixed issue with BioScan Field still reporting to Sec AI even when disabled by hacking
- Improved placement of mercs under their UI element while planning mission deployment
- Improved combat and matrix log readability
- Clarified Hacking CPU / APU Spike rules - Scan Level must be 2/2 and all IC Destroyed to Spike
- Removed last few placeholder icons in character appearance
- Removed confusing mentions of friendly fire in combat log when it really isn't
- Fixed issues with many non-English characters like umlauts
- Fixed issues with some narrator dialogs being oddly aligned to the right
- Fixed issues with dialog characters sometimes clipping into geometry, feeling oddly squished, having odd lighting, being at odd rotations