Major changes to combat, economy, and ease of gameplay with spattering of misc changes and bug fixes. The early game gets some love, with some effort to push most of the grind to the mid and late game.
Change Log
- Drag and dropping a data file into the window it came from will no longer cause a transfer.
- Jumping off of the edge and missing a lower platform will no longer teleport you to the System Access. You will now be transported to (roughly) where you jumped from.
- The Status screen, Program Library, and Journal are now all held in a parent menu. Opening one will give you quick access to the others. This menu is also accessible from the home computer.
- You can now skip the Rest movie, the Jack-In movie, and the Net Navigation movie by left clicking.
- I have increased Ravencore's potential job offers. There is a 50% a second contract is offered, and then a 25% a third contract is offered. One of the only real upsides currently with Freelancer was the amount of contracts to choose from, and I wasn't comfortable taking that away. With the next major update (focusing on Freelancer gameplay) that will all change, so I'm comfortable now loosening up Ravencore's job offerings.
- Double all base pay from salary and contracts.
- Lowered the base pay of hardware from $40 to $25, but inceased the cost increase per rank from 5% to 30%. This makes the lower-end hardware more affordable relative to income, and pushes "the grind" onto the late-game characters.
- Rebalanced Programming cost to be similar to hardware. It will be cheaper and more accessible early game, and more expensive late-game.
- Increased the Processor Discount rates from $4.90 to $10 per 8THZ.
- Radically increased movement speed in the Net. Celerity now increases move speed by an even greater degree.
- Systems now crash 10 seconds after issuing the reboot command in the CPU.
- Players now begin the game with the Onion mod, which adds 3 sheild tags at the beginning of combat.
- Re-worked the way IC handles program execution. Previously they just ran the program, and the player made a test to resist. Now they make the same "attack" test as the player.
- Reworked the attack tests. All combatants will have a greater chance of hitting higher level targets. An Avatar or Firewall with no Breach Tags gains a bonus, making it even harder to affect them. A single Breach tag will now have a significant effect, with additional Breach Tags further decreasing the effective Firewall rating.
- During their activation phase, the Avatar and IC will remove 1 Breach tag. In order to *really* Breach an IC, you will need multiple Breach subroutines in one program, or slow their Activation with Spam in order to bog them down. This is happens before virus checks, so a Corrosion virus will always keep a Breach tag on the IC (until removed).
- Skills no longer factor in to resisting IC attacks, but the ECHO bonus will.
- If a program with a Breach subroutine gets blocked by the IC Firewall, each Breach subroutine will roll again to see if they can still apply a Breach Tag. This makes it much easier to "Breach" a higher level IC. IC do not have this bonus.
- Purge subroutines will work 100% of the time, regardless of the IC Firewall.
- Programs used outside of combat will always succeed, but are still subject to Masking tests. Literally reversed this change from the last patch after some more playtesting, Makes more sense thematically as well.
- The Combat Log now clearly states when an IC inflicts a Tag on you.
- The Combat Log lines have been color coordinated. White is a player action. Red is an IC action, or negative effect.
- Increased the difficulty for Masking tests when passing through checkpoints.
- Running a program forces a normal Masking test, and if you fail, you get a second chance with a penalty before a tag is inflicted. The previous version had less of a chance per test, and both tests were equal chances.
- Fixed a bug that was not reseting contract variables after completing an Overwatch mission.
- Fixed a bug with the Exodus IC trace time. It's now 10 seconds, plus (Masking-IC_Rating), with every Misdirection tag adding 3 seconds to the timer.
- Fixed a bug with the Purge queue icons not being displayed.
- Fixed a graphical bug with the Dead End IC.
- Fixed a bug when upgrading Masking, where the cost wouldn't update.
- Fixed a bug with the Extractor subroutine, not having a proper icon (which was causing other issues).
- Fixed a bug where an IC with an effective Firewall of 0 (due to tags) was able to resist most programs.