Hi everybody! Version 27 is now live, and represents another big push on content and improving balance.

New Content Summary
Caia Winters, the final ally is now in the game, as are 6 new high end weapons, 5 new perks, additional dialogue encounters, a new map, a new utility item and 2 new crafting options.



Melee Interrupts
The first key balance change is the addition of melee interrupts, which allows melee equipped or unarmed characters to interrupt adjacent characters who are attempting to fire a gun or throw an explosive. This makes the two primary combat skills more distinct and gives melee characters some much needed close quarters superiority.

Difficulty Curve
The second big change relates to game difficulty and how it develops over time. Reports and my own experience suggest that the game starts out difficult, and generally becomes easier over time. To create a more consistent difficulty curve, enemies now start with lower stats, but gain levels more quickly. There's not a huge difference at the first two difficulty levels, but from now on, it will be more difficult to out-pace enemies on hard boiled and hero difficulty levels.

Player Stats
Fleetness is largely considered the best stat in the game, so to improve balance, Prowess, Instinct, Leadership and Toughness now offer improved benefits. Balance isn't something that can be easily addressed in a single update, but it will remain one of the key areas of focus for the remainder of development, so expect further improvements in this area.

Thanks very much for your continued support and feedback! It really is a huge help with both motivation and tuning Vigilantes into the best game it can be.

Have a good weekend!
Daithi

Development Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL3iTFJpQCU
Update Notes

[Features]
+ Added melee interrupt attacks. These occur when unarmed or equipped with a melee weapon and an enemy in an adjacent tile attempts to throw a grenade or fire a weapon.
+ Vigilantes now has 2 campaign lengths: regular and extended. Extended is the same as the existing campaign, whereas regular focuses on reducing the minimum amount of time required to complete the game.

[Content]
+ Added new ally: Caia Winters & her dialogue encounter
+ 3 new Ranged Weapons: General Arms Breacher (Shotgun), Nobuki Ronin+ (Precision Rifle), Eurocorp Tactical (SMG)
+ 3 new melee weapons: Fire Axe, Katana, Sledgehammer
+ New Utility item: Knuckle Dusters
+ New Crafting recipe: Nobuki Ronin +
+ New Perk: Fast Off The Blocks (+3 Initiative)
+ New Perk: Grazed Limbs (15% chance to inflict shaky hands or hamstrung status effect when attacking an enemy with a shotgun)
+ New Perk: Behemoth (20% reduction to incoming damage)
+ New Perk: Atheist - 15% additional damage VS Church of the Final Exodus (specific to Caia)
+ New Perk: Soldier +15% Assault Rifle Damage
+ New Map: Farm
+ Added post combat dialogue for Ray Case's encounter
+ Added post combat dialogue for Emilia De Soto's encounter
+ Added post combat dialogue for Elena Furey's encounter
+ Added new dialogue encounter: Insurance Claim

[Balance]
+ Enemies start with lower stats, gain stats more slowly on leveling up, but level up more quickly. This will maintain a more consistent difficulty curve, and keep enemy max stats in line with player max stats
+ [Experimental] Firearm and explosive damage has increased, but damage scaling based on skill has been removed. Critical chance for melee, firearms and explosive now increases with skill.
+ Shop level now increases as you buy and sell items.
+ Further increased quantity of armour components the shop generates
+ Increased number of armour components the shop generates
+ Athletic grips increase initiative by 2, rather than 1
+ Mind cracker perk and sodium thiopental now give a flat % bonus to interrogation.
+ Toughness now grants 6hp, rather than 4 hp per stat point, but each character level now grants 1hp, rather than 2hp.
+ Prowess now grant substantially larger (2x) damage bonuses to close combat.
+ Prowess and Instinct grant substantially (4x) larger bonuses to critical chance.
+ Leadership grants a larger command bonus.
+ Command bonus is now applied to entire teams, regardless of proximity to leader.
+ Once gang leader / racket detection has reached 100%, they can be attacked immediately. Surveillance is no longer required.
+ Eurocorp Artemis now costs the same AP to use as other precision rifles
+ Armour can now take more damage
+ Increased AOO chance. Having a higher close combat skill than your opponent will increase chance of triggering AOO.

[Quality of Life]
+ Information on gang, danger level, tile wealth, crime rate, gang leaders and rackets can now be displayed on the city map

[Fixes]
+ Fixed error in displaying completed ally operations, when the operation completes on a mission (Murkki017, awg, sed.cupla)
+ Fixed issue where characters KOed in a melee attack will sometimes remain standing. (ushas)
+ Fixed equipped items not being minimised when clicking on delay turn (ushas)
+ Fixed encumbered text disappearing in inventory when heavily encumbered (ushas)
+ Fixed queued close combat attack not always triggering after movement when character has move AP (ushas)
+ Fixed pathing for move + queued close combat not always picking the shortest move path
+ Prevented characters reloading in inventory by dragging ammo, when they don't have enough AP for a reload. (ushas)
+ Reachable tiles no longer show that an attack is possible in error, when a character has move AP. (ushas)
+ Fixed an issue where rapidly right clicking a tile adjacent to an exploding object after mousing over same object could lead to character melee attacking the object in error (ushas)
+ Fixed shotguns with no ammo not notifying the player when they attempt to attack (Nathan)
+ Fixed enemies not always spawning with full health, when they are receiving a stat buff from a racket (Murkki017)
+ Fixed getting intel from a racket causing game to become stuck in some cases, if all boss intel is already known. (Murkkio017)
+ Fixed a number of errors with perk descriptions. (awg)