The CUSTOM RIDE major milestone got stuck in a traffic jam behind ENDLESS, so they piled out of the gate together in a big rush. Back-to-back Major Milestones? That's a first :D Don't let the tempo belie the size and scope of this monster update - it rivals proc-gen. CUSTOM RIDE now allows you to tailor your difficulty settings with exacting precision, changing 20 different Difficulty factors during New Game. And you can also just customize your difficulty anytime during play if you'd like to adjust how its working, made a mistake, or need a reprieve or to dial it up a bit.
Add to that new options for windowed, borderless and fullscreen in your options menu, new Auto-Dump threat in the Matrix, fixing Slashslide missing / teleport bug, 2 new helpful market filters and more ... Also, since Proc-gen was just released in ENDLESS, we have added an extra section to the change log just focused on proc-gen stuff (new map! many fixes!) as well. And of course, the traditional mountain of small fixes, typos and QoL requested from your F10s!
Let's say - we've been busy! If you like the improvements and the pace of improvement overall, we hope you'll express your thanks in the form of a review!
The roadmap has started taking some major body blows, it's going to be a photo finish for 2023's items!
So let's dive in!
Custom Difficulty
With Custom Difficulty, you can fine tune the 20 different settings that make up each default Difficulty setting. You can easily start with one -such as Hard - and then tune a few settings off Hard's baseline or you can go all out and change everything you please.
You can modify how / if the game makes automatic saves and if you can make manual saves. You can control who can die on missions (mercs, knights, no one!). You can tweak all the timers and game speeds, the power level of enemies, matrix and their HP pools. If you'd like to make more money or gain more or less XP, the Rewards section can help. You can tweak the default settings for resistances to negative traits, wounds and death. Finally, the economic difficulty settings let you adjust prices for 5 major categories in the game.
Twenty settings are a lot of settings! We recommend you lean on the major default categories and then change things where you know you want a different experience.
Remove Security Tally per Turn "Timer"
For players who do not like the pressure built into having the Sec AI increase the Security Tally every Turn, you can now remove this entirely with a new difficulty field Sec Tally Mod. With custom difficulty you can also slow the story events down massively if you're feeling overly pressured with the timing of the game's story.
If you don't want to turn of Sec Tally complete, you can set it 1 lower all the time or for the hardest difficulties, you can pop it up by +1 per Turn.
Flexible Difficulty - Change Any Time you want
Custom Difficulty is amazing during New Game but why stop there? During any point in play - from the Safehouse or during a Mission - you can now convert your game's difficulty to Flexible and then just customize it on the fly, as often as you like. Decide the timers are too much? Nuke 'em. Started on Hard but it's killing you? Fix it.
With flexible difficulty you can change any aspect of difficulty as often as you would like. Tweak this, tweak that, don't like it? Tweak it again!
We know this is also going to be very helpful from players who already started games who might want to adjust their starting difficulty. Maybe it wasn't what you expected or you dislike the security timers more than expected - tweak on, Knight.
There are some warnings that we need to post up front before you make the change.
- This is a one way conversion from Hard or Custom or whatever to Flexible. You won't be able to take screenshots showing that your on Hard Difficulty anymore. That seems fair.
- Not all changes can be retroactive. If you change Story Speed, story events that were already created and given deadlines will not slow down or speed up based on your change.
- Difficulty is IN each individual saved game. So, if you've made previous manual saves, they will not be changed and any auto-saves like Retry Level or Restart Mission also do not have these changes (until you start a mission after the changes are committed). So, keep an eye on that!
Windowed, Borderless, Fullscreen
We've completed the work to add windowed, borderless and fullscreen options, and their paired resolution offerings, to the options menu in the game. Sorry we didn't have this before, glad to be able to add it with Update #28.
Proc-Gen: New Level, Many Fixes
There is a solid list of improvements for Proc-Gen here with Update #28. We've added a new level, using the mission map from Forward Op to the list of proc-gen missions, allowing you to Raid and Kill 3 in this new zone. More new maps are coming, but we wanted to get this online quickly to increase variation.
We've also redone how CPU Spike missions were working. Previously, the instant you spiked the CPU, the mission was over. Now, you can spike and stick around until the time runs out or you walk away to the blue glowing exit area.
From a balance standpoint, we've significantly tightened up the Max Turns you can take to complete the CPU Spike on these missions. They are 1-2 Turns shorter, putting extra pressure on your hacker to move quickly and leaving less time at the end for random looting.
Matrix Auto-Dump + Dumpshock gets Teeth
The new Auto-Dump feature of Matrix nodes puts some extra challenge and risks into sliding through the quantum networks. Incinerators, CPU and APU nodes now will all auto-dump your hacker if your Turn is ended in the node. Be careful with your AP, watching out for Traps and other IC that might prevent you from getting out quickly enough - you may end up kicked to the Hard Disconnect and end up with Dumpshock.
Speaking of Dumpshock - with Update #28 it has grown some teeth! It now nerfs Move Speed and Wound Res both at -25%. We removed its Accuracy Debuff because that's never fun.
Owned and Ready to Sell Market Filters
Update #28 adds 2 new helpful market filters - Owned and Can Sell. The Owned filter converts the market (which is really a list of what you can buy and notes about what you own in that list) to a full Invetory, just showing everything you own. Can Sell does the same but filters this list down to items which are truly ready for sale. If you have Pistol Silencers 5/5 (5 used and 5 owned) then this will not appear in your Can Sell while your RapidFire 1/2 (1 held, 2 owned) will, making Can Sell a quick way to find things to sling to your Contacts without having to look through the list yourself.
Cybersword Talents & Skill Tree
We unwound some issues with the Cybersword's Slashslide Talent that could result in an odd teleport after it was used. We've also fixed issues with Talent upgrades for Aegis and Deflection Field not lining up and making sense.
More, actually a good deal more - check out the full release notes!
v1.2.3 - 12/11/2023
- Change any aspect of your game's difficulty you want with over XX options in Custom Difficulty
- Disable Timers by modifying Security Tally per Turn and Story Speed in custom difficulty
- Adjust your game's Difficulty during playing from the Mission or Safehouse menu (only some changes take immediate effect)
- Added options for Fullscreen, Borderless and Windowed mode and accompanying Resolution into game options
- Matrix CPU, APU and Incinerators all Auto-Dump if Hacker ends turn in the node, causing an immediate Hard Disconnect
- Upgraded Matrix Dumpshock Debuff to be -25% Wound Res, -25% Move Speed, -10% Evasion, -1 AP
- If teleported in Matrix by a Blackhole, game now centers on and selects your new node position
- Fixed bug with after-Slashslide teleport, Slashslide not hitting 2nd or 3rd enemies
- Fixed issues with and improved Cybersword's Aegis Talent upgrades - more invulnerable tokens, bonus Evasion
- Fixed issues with and improved Cybersword's Deflection Field Talent upgrades - adding range options
- Fixing Item Class "ECM Tech" is "Hi-Tech", fixed IO-Charger to be Hi-Tech and Patch X-Kit to be Medical
- Easy to spot and use "Remove" option now available for all optional appearance categories
- Added new market filter "Owned" which shows everything you own not mixed in with what is being sold by contacts
- Added new market filter "Can Sell" which shows only what is ready to sell to Contacts right now
- For finger convenience, H now toggles pop up in class tree (close and open)
- Extended duration for Forward Op mission
- Fixed issues with over-aggressive graying out of Talents and prevent previewing range circles
- Fixed issue in safehouse timeline that could cause a crash when starting an interaction with timeline running
- For Proc Gen:
- Added additional mission map (from "Forward Op") to map rotation for proc-gen - new maps and new objectives coming soon (but not at same times as other Major Milestones lol)
- Rebuilt how Spike CPU missions work so that you can hang around after spiking the CPU for extra looting
- Tightened the timelines on Spike CPU missions, dropping 1-2 Turns
- Fixed Raid proc-gen missions incorrectly stating they were against Warner-Braun when they are against a gang instead
- Improved sewer levels high walls beyond play area and the camera bounding areas
- Fixed props issues with trashbags and desks in new proc-gen mission maps
- Fixed issue with desk corners you could walk through in new proc-gen mission maps
- Fixed odd glowing zones appearing on the bridges when they were crossed in proc-gen missions
- Fixed typos in Treaty of '31 starting Legwork ("Blur is snooping around Blur")