Hey everyone! This update was originally going to be a lot larger, but alas, it seemed to be taking forever. So instead I'll be breaking the major update I had planned into some smaller ones. I have "rolled back" some of the features that I've been working on, which aren't complete, and instead decided to release what I already have complete in today's update. Don't worry this is still a very substantial update. As always, there could be some bugs, or something I missed or messed up, so please report it in the bug reports and I'll tackle the issue as soon as I can.
Change Log
New Economic Infrastructure
Previously the player's money was a simple variable. When you spent money, this variable was decreased and the "money" never really went anywhere. When the player earned money, the Money variable was increased, but never came from anywhere. Now there are persistent bank accounts for the player, and every npc. Every exchange of funds is an actual transfer between these accounts. The player's "money" is now the balance of their active account.
- Players have 1 primary account that can never been closed, hacked, or corrupted.
- Freelancers can open additional accounts, for $500 each.
- Added the "Virtuous Trust Home App" to the home desktop for players to manage their accounts.
- Players can transfer funds freely between any owned accounts, that are secure.
- Players can transfer funds from any un-owned account, into a non-primary account. Because Ravencore employees only have a primary account, this option is restricted to Freelancer and Company modes.
- Players can only steal 10% of an accounts balance, before fraud detection shuts it down. This means no one account will be a huge payday without multiple transactions.
- When stolen money is transferred into a player account, the account starts "burning". Money cannot be transferred from a burning account into the primary account. At midnight all burning accounts are "burnt" and the player loses them, along with any remaining balance. You can still spend money from a burning account without issue before it is burnt.
New Freelancer Gameplay Features
- Steal money from bank accounts. Players can open a burner account for $500, dump all their stolen money into it, and try and spend the balance before midnight.
- Money laundering. An alternative to straight up stealing funds. A new npc will give you a special account to dump stolen credits into. They will clean them slowly, and transfer legitimate funds into you active bank account... for a commission of course. You can invest money to increase the rate at which funds are cleaned.
- PayData. Search datastore nodes for files that may be valuable, and sell them to a new npc. The higher level the node and HOST, the more valuable data than can be found. There is variation, so sometimes a valuable looking file may be worthless, or be worth a small fortune. Searching for PayData forces a HOST masking test, so it can be risky.
Ravencore Changes
- Instead of a random assortment of contracts, once you are rank 2 (so after 2 promotions), you will get 1 contract of your rank, 1 contract of 1 rank less, and 1 contract of 2 ranks less. This will ensure there is always contracts that can be worked, and a promotion won't cause a severe difficulty spike.
- Reworked the way contract difficulty is calculated. Contracts now have a base difficulty of (1+(2*(Rank +1)). Basically the difficulty of contracts starts at 3, and increases by 2 for every rank past 0.
- Players will earn 20% commission at every rank, instead of the commission increasing per rank.
- Complete rebalancing of salary, quota, and promotion thresholds. Players should now be promoted to a new rank, after (roughly) earning enough money that they should be powerful enough to actually complete the contracts. The salary has increased in general to offset not only the increased thresholds, but to make it competitive with Freelance income (although still a fair bit less).
- Daily quota has been reduced by 5%. Just some extra wiggle room to complete Operations, and accelerate promotions.
Hacking Changes
- Accruing Tracking Tags equal to your Masking no longer causes you to crash instantly. Now a countdown will commence, similar to a system crash, but with a duration based on your Masking and Stealth vs the HOST level. When the countdown completes, the HOST has located and severed your connection to the system.
- Introduced a new type of damage, called BURN. Burn damage reduces your attribute rating, and unlike TAGS, cannot be removed (until you log out).
- Introduced a new masking test, a HOST test, that occurs when you perform overt, and obviously illegal actions within the system, such as scouring for PayData, or stealing money from bank accounts. HOST tests are 30% harder than normal to resist, and inflict Burn damage to your Masking Rating, instead of adding Tags.
- Breach tags which previously "damaged" the Firewall, now use the term "BURNED", as they are functionally the same.
- The Avatar Display now displays how many point of each attribtued are BURNED in addition to their Rating and Tag count.
- Added Security Sweeps. Every 30 seconds in the system, the HOST will roll a test to try and detect you, making a HOST test.
- Added an "Analyze %" display to the Analyze window. This will make it easier to know how many Analyze Tags are required.
Oracle Changes
- Subroutines can be removed by clicking on them in the Program Suboutines window.
- Replaced the Code Bits buttons with a slider to easily add and remove Code Bits.
- Cleaned up several UI elements.
Misc. Changes
- Migrated game to the latest Unreal Engine version.
- Added Audio Control option to the pause menu, where you can adjust the Master, Music, and Sound Effects volumes.
- Overhauled the music and sound systems. Replaced the program execution and IC sounds effects. Added more UI sound effects. Added walking and jumping sound effects. Added sound effects in Root Access when commands are entered.
- New hardware: Storage. You can no longer hold infinite files. Instead each file has a size, which takes up room in your Data Storage. Upgrading your Storage, allows more data to be held. This will be important for a Freelancer trying to farm PayData.
- Reworked and re-balanced transfer rates. Files now have varying sizes, and transfer speeds are directly proportionate to your Gateway speed. For example, with a 5GBps Gateway, it would take 4 seconds to transfer a 20 GB file.
- Re-balanced Gateway speeds to give more value to higher level Gateways.
- Polished the Avatar Status UI, it now looks much better.
- Updated all dialogue UI, and added a camera focus for each npc while talking with them.
- Nodes shells are now translucent, to give a better idea of what the node is at a distance.
- Data files have a new, sleeker look, and now display their size in the title for easy reference.
- Adjusted Bonus pay for employees down from $1000 per rank, to $100 per rank.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the tutorial line that said "run [logeditor]" to say "run [log_editor]".
- Fixed a bug that was making the Analyze Tags not function properly.
- Fixed a bug that was causing the number keys to play sound effects after running Passbreaker, even after it closes.
Thanks for your patience!
-Southwind