Update 35: War Cult Or Pacifist?

Update 35 Changelog

War Cult

• An Alternative To Donuts: A lot of folks were having trouble finding how to start the machine cult, which is not surprising. It was pretty obscure. It was never meant to be the only path to start the cult, but rather just a way you could stumble into things. The old way is still there, but now there's a more directed way of starting the cult.
• Hint: Civil War: If you're in the middle of the civil war, the cult is very easy to start now. There's a separate achievement for starting it this way. There's some slightly different text and lore this way, too.

Scavenging Lens Retired

• StreetSense Alternatives: All of the things that used to be in the Scavenging Lens are now handled through StreetSense, which makes it so that players don't have to try to remember which lens it was in. Only a few things were in the scavenging lens to begin with.
• Wallripping And Quiet Looting Moved: These were previously abilities that you had to equip on your ability bar. They're now StreetSense actions that you can take without having to do that.
• Transport For Scandium Simplified: Fairly early in chapter one, when it asks you to shoot down a transport for scandium, the instructions are now much simpler, reflecting the simpler workflow.

Systems Integrity On Human Vehicles And Mechs

• Systems Integrity Stat: All mechs and vehicles controlled by enemy forces now have a Systems Integrity stat, which tends to be about twice whatever their health is. This allows you to take them down without killing the humans inside them.
• "Pinpoint Systems" Ability: This new ability has been added to all of the vehicles and mechs, and to all androids that have room for it on their ability bars. It's available to be assigned to any unit now. This is like a "morale damage" system for enemy vehicles and mechs. If they have Systems Integrity, then your units can damage that stat and can cause them to leave the battlefield in a nonlethal way.
• Systems Disruption Directly On Units: Eight of your androids, four of your bulk androids, eight of your mechs, and four of your vehicles now have a Systems Disruption type of damage directly on themselves. This allows them to specialize in non-lethal takedowns of mechs and vehicles beyond what Pinpoint Systems can do on its own.
• "Oath Of Pacifism" Improvements: This piece of equipment now grants 150 Systems Disruption along with the various other things it previously granted. It also is now unlocked when you reach intelligence class 2, chapter 2, or when you reach the Scandium Acquisition project, whichever happens first. This is needed so that you can set up non-lethal bulk androids during chapter one for a non-lethal run.
• "Practiced Pacifist" Achievement: You can get this new achievement by completing chapter one without killing anyone (murders or otherwise). Prior to this build, this was not possible to do. You could get close, but you couldn't avoid killing the mech pilots or vehicle passengers.

Quality Of Life

• Cheat Sub-List Sorting: A variety of the cheats with sub-lists now sort their entries by alphabetical order instead of their internal sort order. This makes finding resources, units, etc, a lot easier from the lists, especially as they have grown so substantially.
• "Complete Construction" Cheat: A new cheat that automatically completes all current construction has been added.

Balance

• Android-Busting Animals: Both war raptors and parkour bears now have an Android Buster bonus, and have extra aggro against androids of all sorts. The parkour bears also have even more inherent aggro against mechs. This is useful when you're facing a bunch of enemy mechs, but it also work against you when these are enemies.
• Mech Pilots Don't Die: The mech pilot text near the end of chapter one has been rewritten so that the pilot lives and ejects just before their brain is turned to mush. This is less dark, but it's a shift required in order to make non-lethal playthroughs possible.
• Ejected Mech Pilots: The game now spawns an ejected mech pilot when you have hacked a mech's pilot cradle. This gives you the chance to kill them if you want to, although they're just standing there in a brain fog.
• New Vulnerabilities From Behind: ExoCorp Raiders now have 1.75x as much health, but also now have a 1.5x to 1.75x extra vulnerability behind them. ExoCorp MilUnit now have a 1.2x to 1.25x extra vulnerability behind them. They have a ton of health already.
• Armor Piercing On Support Androids: Non-combat androids can now use small-bore piercing rounds, since that is now relevant for them when they're doing systems-disruption-based attacks on armored enemies.
• Infrasonic Loudspeaker Upgrades: This equipment now gets the fear and morale damage upgrade boosts like other morale weapons.

Bugfixes

• Typo Fix: Fixed a typo in the new "Upgrades Come From Research And The VR Screen" handbook entry.
• Invasion Collision Fix: Fixed an issue where some of the various hostile invasions of the city could cause other hostile invasions to not really trigger as intensely when they stacked up. This was mainly a thing if you had something like the SecForce Cruisers, and WW4, and Civil War, and an invasion by one of the ExoCorps all at once. With two it was sometimes an issue, but the more that were stacked, the more that some of them were being missed.
• Mind Farm Customer Speed In Broken Economy: Fixed an error where the rise of mind farm customers with a broken economy was not happening properly unless you also had a coupon program going. Now they properly flood in both before you get Mega Mind, and after.
• Burned Building Fix: Fixed an amusing bug where if burned-out buildings were caught in another explosion, they would pop back up and burn down a second time.
• NPC Spawn Fixes: Adjusted the spawn radii that are allowed for some of the NPC spawners so that there should no longer be any edge cases where NPCs fail to show up. This was another piece of remaining problems from how I changed the distance calculations in Update 33. I've done a full review of all the places in the xml that are at all vulnerable to this, and have adjusted them all.
• Misattributed Attempted Murder: Fixed a bug where attempted murders by third parties could be counted against you. I don't think that this ever actually came up, but it would have been very annoying if it did.
• Quietly Loot StreetSense Reactivity: When the Quietly Loot project starts, it should now refresh the StreetSense items right away so that the ability to quietly loot alumina will show up right away, rather than you having to wait one turn before it's visible.
• Missing Casinos Fix: The game now ensures that there are at least 10 casinos in every city. In some of the map types, it was possible to get a city with none present.
• POI Owner Sanity: A number of types of POI, such as airports, normally take their ownership from the parent district they are in. Sometimes if they are seeded in a district that is controlled by rebels or similar, that winds up giving them nonsensical ownership, though. This is now corrected during initial mapgen, as well as any time a savegame is loaded. POIs own by cohorts that have been disbanded are also reassigned now, similarly.
• Oerl Mech Timing: Fixed an issue with the Oerl mission spawns where sometimes the mech or the rebel observer would not appear. This was partly related to a turn timer interval that was in place, and partly related to their spawning restrictions being too heavy.
• Project Completion Timing: Projects will no longer mark themselves complete during the enemy turn, but rather will wait until after the turn is completed and until the autosave is completed if an autosave is being started. This should prevent some torn savegames where a project ends but its consequences are not in the autosave. This has been tested and works, but there's still the chance of some other edge cases.
• Remember Money Is A Thing: If Vorsiber ends the civil war for you in any manner, then wealth goes back to normal like it was supposed to. Previously it was still having shops and employment based on meal kits. It was also barring you from the coupon program and nicotine additions, which also now properly show up again, too.

Beta Notes

• New Dooms Preview: Players on the beta branch can now test the upcoming International Scrutiny doom set. It's only in English until next week, when it will come out on the main branch.