Hackers unite! The planet awaits, let's hack it! We're excited to roll out the Matrix Hacking Tutorial today, checking off one more major milestone from the roadmap. The HACK THE PLANET major milestone also comes with some other major changes to how cyberdecks and hacking work - allowing you to transfer programs freely and now cyberdecks take lasting damage that is costly in time and money to repair. In order to make the best tutorial possible, we've made a lot of improvements to the matrix and its UI as well.
Jump in, getting hacking!
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Matrix Tutorial At Long Last!
After along way - and many improvements to the Matrix systems - we're excited to finally roll out the full Matrix tutorial. The tutorial will be available in any game immediately - and might contain some valuable tips and info for veteran and new players alike.
The tutorial is offered the first time you try to deploy a hacker to a mission. It will only be offered once per game.
And you can disable the tutorial (and all future offers), from your Options > Gameplay menu. Once you've run the tutorial or if you just want to skip it - turn it off.
The tutorial will set you up on a solo hack, guide you through the basic process of hacking, help you deploy a CPU Spike, steal some paydata and disable some security devices. All of this is done with a special character "Tutorial Ahab" (a BIG shout out to Ahab for all the work on the wiki Hacking guides on hacking that were featured heavily in planning and writing this tutorial). Therefore, with your Tutorial-only character, there is no gain or loss for taking the tutorial - you can't suffer damage and the loot is deleted at the end of the mission.
So - hacker, go forth and learn! Let us know your feedback.
Final note, the tutorial is a procedure set of steps intended to be followed. It is not built to react to you going off script wildly. If you want to run the tutorial and learn to hack, plox follow the instructions and read the pop ups :D
Transfer Programs between Decks
With the HACK THE PLANET major milestone, we've also enabled easy transfer of programs between decks. Programs are valuable investments, critical pieces of software that you can buy or steal (via Files & File Sets). These chunks of quantum software can be moved between cyberdeck hardware now by using the Uninstall button. The program is dropped back to your available programs list and can be installed on a new deck.
Note (see below) you cannot uninstall programs if your deck is damaged or currently in repair.
Deck Damage & Repair
Cyberdeck Damage is no longer automatically and instantly repaired at the end of a mission at the cost of $0. If your deck takes damage during a hacking run due to destructive feedback signals from the IC or the Q-Sec Escalations, that damage comes home with you. It persists into the next mission and makes you more vulnerable to deck burn out.
However, when you're ready - because you have some hacker downtime or can swap in another deck - you can start a repair on your deck. This will take some time and money - and get more expensive as your deck is more expensive - but will restore your deck to 100% Health.
You cannot deploy to a mission with a Deck that is currently in repair, so be careful picking when to stop your hacking and take some repair downtime.
Max Program Count
To better facilitate easy program swapping and the new deck balance, we've opted to use a Max Program Count for cyberdecks instead of Storage Size metric that was being used before. This puts a hard cap on number of programs you can load on a deck and will require you to do a bit more planning. Still, the maxes are generous, ranging from 8-12. All the more reason to upgrade decks and transfer your new programs to them.
If you were hoarding programs from before this update (which makes a lot of sense since you can't transfer them ...) your deck will still have all the programs. You won't be able to add new ones and you can now uninstall programs, so hopefully you can spend some time rebalancing your deck for now and the future.
Cyberdeck Pricing
With the cost of repairs now a real thing for cyberdecks, we've rebalanced the price of all decks, bringing them down. You can also transfer programs which makes swapping between decks a much cheaper operation.
Finally, we've modified how deck resale value works to ensure that if you are selling a damaged deck, you'll get proportionally less for it.
Tons of Matrix Improvements
To make the best Matrix tutorial possible, we had to improve the matrix! We're excited that the tutorial comes with a ton of changes and benefits for everyone. So let's look at the list!
We've rewritten all of the IC descriptions to be clearer and exclude exact numbers about what each IC is doing.
We've re-organized the HUD to bring all of the action pool elements - Matrix AP, IO and Active Memory - together down in the corner near your programs. This lets your eye look only one place when trying to figure out the limits of what you can do and planning your next move.
We've rebuilt the display of Sec Tally per Action (for hacking) and Sec Tally per Turn (for meat-space) to be clear and to avoid you needing to count tiny yellow squares all the time. The new HUD element also just helps reinforce how the rules work.
If you disable an IC, the Q-Sec Tally penalty icon and text now go gray, reinforcing the rule that if the IC is disabled then you do not get Q-Sec Tally added if they are destroyed. The stealthy hacker disables before killing.
In the same vein, if an IC or other factor is preventing connection to neighboring nodes, the connection lines are grayed out.
We've redone the matrix host Ratings (now Blue, Green, Yellow Orange, Red, Ulta) to be ordered like the actual spectrum of colors. Also, we're trying out a rename for the host response system, the Q-Sec AI going from Bronze Boa, Silver Rattler, Gold Viper, Platinum Cobra to Diamond King.
We've rebalanced 2 starting Hacker Talents - Hardshell is less powerful starting only with +20 Temp Cyberdeck Health instead of +30 and Overclock is more damaging to your connection, starting at -3% Connection per turn instead of -2%.
Toggle Snap to Cover during Movement
We have added the much requested toggle for snap to cover during movement. Cyber Knights features a gridless movement system but we also include the snap-to-cover helper to make it easier to get your mercs into good positions around corners and near to important cover.
But, sometimes that is annoying. You don't want to snap, you know exactly where you want to be. In these cases, you can just toggle of Snap now while moving and put your movement position where you want it without any help or friendly interference.
Auto-Select Equipment
When changing equipment, we've improved the following equipment screen where you can browse for your replacements. This screen was not auto-selecting the item you are replacing, which was confusing. Now, if you click to replace your sniper rifle, that exact sniper rifle will be selected in the list of weapons that could replace it, making it much clear what you're up to and also make it just one click or keypress away to start comparing the current rifle to other weapons.
Better Tagging and Dismiss Rules
We've fixed a set of issues with the safehouse and roster tagging. Before this update, the tags for Simstream Trainer, Detox, Wound Treatment and Injury Treatment were all lumped into a single "Treatment" Tag. We've now broken out the "Simstream" tag separately to make this more clear when you're looking at the entire safehouse and then once you dive into the Roster you can see all 4 tags separately so it is clear from the list who is where and why without having to try to figure out exactly which of the 4 treatment types we're talking about.
We've also made some fixes to how Dismissing works in regards to benches and cyber surgery. If you kick someone off the team now, they are correctly removed form the Detox, their cyber surgery is canceled, etc so that they aren't hanging around consuming a valuable spot even though you've booted them.
Charged Strike Renamed Power Slice
With the last update we did a bit of renaming clean-up for what was Conduit Edge and Charged Strike. Unfortunately, "Charged" is not the best word to be using (are we running at an enemy? are we using Talent charges?) so we've renamed again. Also, the use of IO-Batt for the melee weapons charges was conflict with IO for Matrix, and that's not helpful - so we've renamed that too!
Here is the list of changes:
- Charged Attack has become Power Slice
- Improved Charged Attack (previously Conduit Edge) has become Improved Power Slice
- IO-Batt charges have become Ion Batt Charges
- IO-Charger item has become Ion Recharger
Wired Safehouse Rooms
We've made some visual improvements to safehouse rooms - adding more trash, junk and wires. They feel more alive and deeper now. We'll keep working on the look here but this is a nice polish pass.
Contact Hover in Selling Window
If you are considering who your things to - especially your high Rarity Accounts that will cause Influence changes - then you'll be happy to know you can now hover over a Contact's head in the seller/buyer pop up to see their full hover. This can make it easy to know when to stop selling your Epic Accounts to a Contact when they reach 80% Influence without having to hop between screens again.
v1.8.55 - 8/19/2024
- All new Matrix Hacking Tutorial will be offered next time you try to deploy to a mission with a hacker (once per game)
- Disable Matrix Hacking Tutorial in options or during New Game
- New feature: Uninstall and transfer programs between Cyberdecks
- Cyberdeck damage persists between missions, if deck is damaged enough you can start a repair at the safehouse (time, money)
- Programs cannot be uninstalled while a deck is damaged
- Cyberdecks now have maximum program count instead of storage size
- Rebalanced / reduced price of most cyberdecks
- Rewrote all IC descriptions, effects and trigger clauses to be more clear and specific
- Improved display of Sec Tally / Turn in meat-space and Q-Sec Tally / Action in matrix
- Improved display of Q-Sec Tally penalty for destroying an active IC
- Improved order of Matrix Ratings to match color spectrum: Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red Ultra
- Connection lines between matrix nodes now gray out if connection is blocked
- Re-organized and improved Matrix HUD - AP joins IO and Active Memory in bottom left
- Hacker's Hardshell starts at +20 Temp Cyberdeck Health instead of +30
- Hacker's Overclock starts at -3% Connection per turn instead of -2%
- Cyberdeck Resale value is impacted by damage
- New toggle for movement snap to cover - turn off for exact placement, on for best cover placement
- Auto-select the piece of equipment you are changing when you click it (click Sniper Rifle, see weapons but Sniper Rifle starts selected)
- Added Contact Hover to sell window to give easiest access to Influence and Service details
- Fixed issues with roster and character tagging - new tag Simstream splits from Treatment, even more accurate counting
- Fixed bugs when dismissing characters who are in benches (cyber surgery, detox, etc)
- Fixed bugs with Motion Detectors often seeing over low cover
- Fixed bugs with dead bodies sometimes being seen through Vanguard's Refract
- Completed trio of renames: IO Batt => Ion Batt, IO-Charger => Ion Recharger, Charged Attack => Power Slice