The update is finally here, and only a couple weeks past due! Thanks for the patience everyone. This update has major changes relating to running a company, but there are lots of tweaks and adjustments based on your feedback that ripple through the entire game.
Change Log
- Overhauled the company mechanics. -Increased the number of employees you can hire from 20 to 80. -All employees start with low stats, and cost the same to hire. -In an attempt to mirror the Ravencore career, your employees will manage themselves. They will take automatically check the contracts available, and take one fitting to their rank. You will no longer have to manually assign them jobs. -Employees will accumulate Neural Stress, and rest when it gets too high. -Employees have a quota and will always try and attain it. They will also have a Loyalty rating, which determines how far above their quota they will work everyday. -Employees will manage their own money, upgrading their Hardware and Software stats when they can afford to. -You will manually promote and demote employees. -Performing management tasks will not only take time, but you will accumulate Neural Stress. Like hacking, if you are too burned out you cannot perform these tasks.
- The passage of time has been re-worked. You will no longer 'jump forward' in time when programming, resting, or performing management functions. Instead time scrubs forward at a rate of about 1 hour per second. This allows for better ability to check for events and actions as time passes.
- Programming now takes 1 hour (or 2 hours with the Bad Scripting Habits background trait), regardless of program complexity.
- Updated the Rest Function. The max time on the slider has been reduced to 12 hours. You can no longer rest if your Neural Stress is at 0%, or rest longer than it would take to reduce your Neural Stress to 0%.
- There is now a warning when you attempt to rest with an active contract.
- Reworked the message center mechanics. Emails with attachments, or that want a response will no longer be removed from the list until the attachment is downloaded or the message is responded to. This will be important as we get closer to rolling out the story updates.
- Lowered the distance the Node Name display is visible from 100 meters to 30 meters. This still makes it much easier to ID nodes when running around, without completely removing all sense of exploration. It also cleans up the UI, making it much less cluttered.
- Rebuilt the Disconnect button in the Net level. It now seems to be bug-free and working as intended.
- You can spoof accounts from anywhere in the system, however you will still need to access the User Information node to gain User privileges, and the Personnel Files to gain Admin privileges.
- Security Patrols (Guardians) now require Admin privileges to bypass.
- The Hunter IC has been buffed by shortening the base trace time, and by reworking how Static tags affect races. Now they slow the interval of the 'tick' based on the % of Static Tags vs the Static attribute, to a maximum of 3x when IC Sensors are reduced to 0. Reducing Sensors to 0 no longer shut down the trace, the IC still must be defeated.
- IC assigned to nodes have been re-adjusted, moving the debuffing and tracing type IC to lower-sec nodes, while having the higher-sec nodes equipped with IC that focus on destroying the player.
- The Hunter has been replaced by Enigma in the mid-tier checkpoints. This better fits the concept of the Enigma IC; trying to make your future battles harder.
- Completing Operations now applies progress towards your daily quota.
- When a checkpoint is crashed, bypassed, or spoofed, all checkpoints within 2 meters are destroyed and replaced with a copy that completely lack collision or logic. I have not encountered the double-checkpoint, or invisible wall bug since making this change. *Fingers crossed*
- Restructured how Operation "XP" is awarded post contract (still need to read the email to get the reward). The game now has a second check. If any stat is over 100% the XP needed when the 'career info' screen is opened, and levels it up accordingly.
- Ravencore stat-progress will be displayed as "-" when the stat reaches level 5, instead of continuing to display as a %.
- Hotbar input are now properly locked out when the Root Access and Bank Account screens are open.
- Data Anomalies are currently disabled for non-quest items/rewards.
- Salary in the Career Info screen is now displaying properly of you have the Negotiator Perk.
- Changed the "Install program.exe" commands in Root Access to no longer be case sensitive.
- Fixed a the command "disable lights(all)"; it was using the old square bracket syntax.
- Phone systems now have a System Log so you can cover your tracks easier
- Updated the non-combat log messages to decay much quicker, and be much more visible.
- Found and removed some old debugging code that was causing Ravencore Wealth XP to climb without performing an operation.
- Changed the message box to blank for a second and fade in when a new message is received. This makes it much easier to notice when the text changes.
- Fixed a bug with purchasing the Ravenbond, where it would credit your account instead of debiting it.
- Updated the Ravencore Security text description to reflect that Operations are no longer checked every 6 hours, which was probably causing some confusion.
- Lowered the rate of Operation availability due to the increased rate it is checked.
- Updated how story-levels are loaded/saved. This fixes a bug that was causing the wrong system to be loaded, and by extension the target node would be missing. As a bonus, the change will make adding more content easier in the future.
- Fixed a bug preventing the targeted security camera footage from appearing in the folder.
- Fixed a bug with Camera subversion jobs that would prevent it from being flagged as complete.
- Added a 3 second delay before the UI appears when logging in.
- The Mysterious Email quest line has been tweaked to make objectives more clear (but not too much).
- The 'monologue' window has been visually updated instead of being a grey slab with some text in the middle of the screen.
- The Journal has been visually updated. Just making it look better for now, as it will receive some bigger changes with the upcoming story update.
I originally had some additional things I was planning on adding to this update, but I felt it was better to get what was done out there instead of delaying the update more and more.