Economic Overhaul and Balance
- Reduced the global scale of income and cost significantly. Because this game is the first of a series of games in the universe, the inflated pay-rates and costs weren't viable when you contrasted with say, buying an assault rifle. It seemed best to reign this in now, so I have a good foundation to build from. Characters earn what would be reasonably expected of a person of their profession, and not become millionaires within a few months.
- Reduced the curve (and scale) of job-pay significantly. Contracts use to pay ((SystemLevel*SystemLevel)*(JobDifficulty)*120). This of course caused contracts to pay exponentially more the higher the System Level (which is the base difficulty). The contract pay is now calculated as (((SystemLevel * (1 + (SystemLevel * 0.05))*JobDifficulty)*8). Not only is the base pay down significantly (down to $8 from $120), but each rank only increases the pay by 5% per level, instead of it's rank level squared. This causes a steady increase, but not to extreme levels. For example before the update, the average rank 1 job payed $144, and the average rank 10 job payed $14,440. After the update, the average rank 1 job pays around $10, and the average rank 10 job pays $144. This is a more comfortable curve, while also making more sense in a real-world market (especally considering it's about 10 minutes work).
- Reduced Ravencore Salary significalty. For example: Neophyte salary went from $1200 per day down to $135 per day. Salary is now set so that the Salary + Commission earnings is roughly 77% of what the player would be earning per-day if they were working the same contracts as a Freelancer. This keeps the theme of more-money as a Freelancer, but added-value with Ravencore.
- Ravencore commissions changed from 15% + 5% per rank, to 20% + 5% every three ranks. You will also notice on ranks where your commission increases, the Salary jump isn't as high to maintain the 77% balance mentioned above.
- Quotas have been significantly reduced from (Salary * 2.5) to (Salary * 1.25).
- Promotion requirements have been reduced. Players now need to earn a total quota-excess equal to their salary to earn a promotion. This is based on the average daily earnings vs. the quota, and should ensure a smooth promotion rate. Quota-excess is carried over day-to-day.
- Value of programs and treasures have been reduced by 90%.
- All misc costs (such as Ravencore buy-out, company start-up costs, recruitment costs, subroutine costs, management actions, and system address costs) have been reduced by 90%.
- The cost of programming has been rebalanced so that an average program will cost roughly 50% of your average daily earnings if you are completing jobs with a difficulty the same rank as the program.
- The cost of hardware has been rebalanced so that upgrades cost an average of 40% of your average daily earnings if you are completing jobs with a difficulty the same rank as the upgrade. There is variance however, such as Response and Hardening costing more, while Gateways cost less.
- Rebalanced the cost of Mobo's to match the scale of the new economy.
Resolve
Resolve is a game mechanic I came up with years ago for a Pen&Paper game I made. The idea is that skills increase, slowly, naturally, on their own as you use them, but the player can still have freedom to "train" skills they might not use often. The currency required to pay for this training is Resolve, which is sort of a mix of ambition, and motivation.
- Gain Resolve by earning money, or as special rewards.
- Spend Resolve at a training station in Haven to increase your skills, or learn a new Perk.
- Yeah there's Perks now.
Misc Changes
- Added the tutorials for Freelance and Resolve.
- Decreases the size of the Haven environment to increase performance.
- Minor bug fixes.
As always nothing is set in stone, and may need further balancing. Let me know how it goes! Happy Hacking!