The underworld is always moving in New Boston, shifting in the shadows. With Update #115, you can use the clout you've built up with your Contacts to take a bit more of a guiding role to your closest allies - Contact Limit Breaks now offer you some agency. In addition, we've made major balancing changes to Matrix hacking (more charges for Deception and Disarm, less IC), added multiple new levels of Nano-Scrubbers, added token rules directly to the safehouse room descriptions, fixed UI and story bugs and more.
If you appreciate how we are running Early Access - always updates, always improvements- please take a moment to leave a review to share your experience with others.
Contact Limit Breaks with Agency
Your Contacts are gaining Influence of your hard work - running missions for them, gathering and selling them high-rarity accounts, dutifully completing their storylines - you might feel entitled to having some agency on how they spend that Influence.
Well, Update #115 lets you express some of your preferences if you have the Favors to call it in. When a Contact (assuming that you're not their enemy) gains an Influence or Exposure (!!) Limit Break, they still check over their state, goals and current stats to select an upgrade or downgrade.
However, now you can call in a Favor to add new options to their upgrade or downgrade. If you don't have favors, this is still a passive event - you get the single option picked by the Contact and you have to accept it. If you do have Favors to call in, you can spend up to 2 Favors to add 2 new options and then pick among them. Having Favors with your Contact lets you express your preference in what they do, but without full control.
- Perhaps your Gun Runner hits an Exposure Limit Break and is about to hide for 30 days. You can spend a Favor to get another option and instead push them to upgrade a negative Trait or perhaps take a negative temporary Trait.
- Your Gun Runner gets an Influence Limit Break and resolves to upgrade one of their Traits that affects pricing. But you've got Favors in the bank and really need some weapon ugprades, so you can spend some Favors for new options. Maybe first new Favor adds an option for a temporary Trait to raise Misison pay but the second Favor draws the option to upgrade their Street Weapons service from Power Level 3 to 4. Bingo, that's the money.
We're excited to deliver this second level of Contact Limit Breaks, completing more of the game's strategy layer and pulling more of the different threads together. Getting and having Favors with your most important Contacts just got a lot more interesting and important!
Key Jamming in Limit Breaks
We're happy to have fixed the key jamming issues for Limit Breaks. Many players are controlling - pausing and playing - the timeline with the spacebar which can lead to some input jamming. When a Hype Limit Break pops, you were just one press of the spacebar away from having picked the first option and ... done. With Update #115, both Contact and Merc Limit Breaks now select an element above the list, meaning spacebar will not proceed until you click or scroll down (or D-pad down for controllers).
Matrix Rebalance
We've started a focus period of improvements to the Matrix. A big priority this week for us is to wrap up the Matrix tutorial, but along with that are coming a lot of other great improvements.
First, tonight we've redone the rules for how many IC will start in each node. This mostly fixes an error in the previous calculation that didn't take into account the node type - which has its own maximum - but instead just used the global maximum of 6 (yikes!). The result is nodes should have less IC in them and the IC counts should be more interested and varied between nodes. This will really start to show the biggest differences as your team passes Power Level 5.
Second, we've added +1 charges to the entire run of Deception and Disarm programs, starting with Disarm 1 and Deception 1. This is a major change to how much IO you need to use these programs and helps hacking move faster and more smoothly on a turn-to-turn basis.
Big Scrubs
With Update #115, we have added 6 more levels of Nano-Scrubbers to your safehouse. These huge beasts - sometimes called a beacon of hope in a polluted world - are capable of scrubbing a lot. These new upgrades should let you handle a based packed with more high level rooms and crafting, all for a hefty price of course.
Safehouse Room Token Rules
All rooms that generate tokens now list the specific set of actions a token can be used for as well as the levels at which they can be used, such as:
The Tokens granted by the Underworld Hub can be used to boost Legwork chance, reduce Legwork duration, recruit new mercs (level 2+), find new Contacts (level 3+) and can be traded for NBS Cubes (level 4+).
We're excited to keep improving here, finding the right balance between immersive in-world description and a need to have clarity about the rules. Thanks to all the players asking questions and posting suggestion on this one!
Cyberdecks Equip!
There was a bug any time you 2 or more of the same type of Cyberdeck that you really couldn't get them all equipped. This update fixes that issue as well as permanently unstacking Cyberdecks. You want to see each individually, as they have different programs loaded and the stack is not a good way to represent such specific pieces of equipment.
Anyway - equip on good hackers, the bug is fixed!
Fixed Missing Mission Dialog
In a number of the scavenger raid missions from proc-gen, there were odd empty dialog boxes at the start and end of a mission. These are now all fixed!
v1.8.27 - 7/23/2024
- Contact Limit Breaks are now active; spend Favors to gain more options beyond the first to help Contact's upgrade to your preference
- Improved UI in Contact and Merc Limit Breaks to avoid accidentally hitting spacebar (confirm) and not making a choice
- Improved Matrix balancing: redid all IC counts for nodes
- Improved Matrix balancing: +1 Charge for Deception and Disarm programs across the board
- New Safehouse Modules: Nano-Scrubber level 9 to 16 (a beacon of hope in a polluted world)
- Improved safehouse room descriptions to include specific abilities granted by tokens including level requirements
- Fixed a number of scavenger/raid missions that lacked intro or exit dialog
- Fixed bug preventing equipping of cyberdeck when you had more than of the same type, cyberdecks no longer stack
- Fixed issue with Power Level 7 and 8 megacorporate captains locking up level