Mercs and Knights - we have a big one hitting the streets tonight in New Boston! A new proc-gen objective has been added along with +15 new proc-gen combos tied to it, we've rebalanced the enemy spawning sets across every faction and the entire game, tweaked the speed of storyline starting at the beginning of the game to give just a little more breathing room, now allow the results of minting a File Set to add +20% influence, improved the Limit Break UI and more! The relentless pace of updates will not stop during Early Access. If you are enjoying the game and/or the updates, please take a moment to leave a review!

New Infiltrate and Download Proc-Gen Objective

For a long time, we've been focusing on the weekly map release. We have now more than doubled the catalog of available proc-gen maps, much to the benefit of the game's depth of content. We are going to continue to add new maps, but we're going to shift some of our time and focus in a new direction - to proc-gen objectives. With Update #217, we've released a new proc-gen objective - the Infiltrate and Download File Set objective, in which you need infiltrate a location and work on finding from 3 to 4 Files that are resident in matrix hosts on the premises. These missions are definitely a new type of challenge and as they are just harder, they only show up at Power Level 4+. This new objective is now linked to 15 maps, which adds a total of +15 new proc-gen combos, bringing the game's total of combos (map X objective) to 174. While we will be doing map releases, they may start to slip from the weekly goal for a while, as we have 5 other new objective types to roll into the game and we'll be hammering through those over the next 5 weeks.

Enemy Variety Improvements

With Update #217, we've adjusted all of the reinforcement spawning groups in the game as well as some of the starting spawn groups. This has gone along with a consolidation and refinement of the underlying enemy catalog, which is going to help us add more enemy variety in more places more easily. In addition, the underlying improvement is going to allow us to add more fine-grained scaling to the enemy catalogs, where specific enemies can start appearing only after certain Power Levels, which will be important for balancing hard-hitting enemies, enemy Turrets and the upcoming drones as well. This set of changes will have the biggest impact on reinforcement groups, which have a much wider and more pleasing range of variety for all factions. There are also a few levels - like Haven Smokeout and Loophole Heist - that have also benefited from better starting enemy variety due to the changes. Along with this change, we've added a new Brave Star sniper known as a Star Longshot. More enemy types will now be easier to add, so we expect bringing a few more on in the next few weeks to keep increasing variety.

Story Speed Tweaked

With Update #217, we've completed a minor rebalance to the speed at which story gets started out of the gate in the game. This does not affect the pacing of Syndicate Debts, but affects the pacing of all the other follow-only story event types (proc-gen, proc-gen legwork, vignettes, recruit offers). The first change was to push the threshold for any story to start proc'ing back by 1 entire day, from 9.5 days to 10.5 days. It is small, but in the compressed timeline of the early game, it makes a difference. The second was to change how the other types of stories were calculating their starting chance to proc every Turn, which was based on Turn 0 instead of the story start point of 9.5 days, meaning all of the stories were very likely to immediately fire at 9.5 days. Finally, we've made minor 5% adjustments to the speed at which new vignettes and recruit offers will roll up a new story. All in all, these are minor changes, and we're going to be very careful with adjustments to story pacing to make sure we're always homing in closer and closer to the perfect pace.

File Set Mints Grant +20% Influence

While Blueprints and Accounts have both offered ways to grant Influence to your Contacts, there has not been a path through Files. With Update #217, we've updated the rules around the File Sets - any File that is minted from a File Set will now add +20% Influence to any Contact who purchases it. This gives extra motivation to collect and mint File Sets at any Rarity.

Limit Break UI Upgrade

We're excited to push an updated Limit Break UI for both Contacts and Characters. This helps the character pop so it's really clear who you are looking at. In addition, you can now hover over the Contact name and details at the top of the windows to get the full hover with all of their Trust, Services and more - which can be a big help in making your choice. We're working on getting a similar hover wired up for mercs too.

Security Tally Visible in HUD

The last update included a bug where the tallies in the HUD disappeared and were replaced with a blue and yellow bar. We have fixed the bug and the individual tally marks are back.

v1.9.127 - #217: New Proc-Gen Objective and Enemy/Story Rebalance - 2/21/2025

- Added new proc-gen objective: Infiltrate and Hack where you hit a facility, reach terminals and search for files - 15 new maps available for Infiltrate and Download, +15 total proc-gen combos - Any File minted by a File Set will add +20% Influence to the Contact who purchases it if sold - Improved and rebuilt enemy reinforcement groups to have more variety, arrive with more specialists - Improved difficulty of Haven Smokeout mission with better spawning variety - Added a Star Longshot sniper enemy to the Brave Star faction (lightly armored, fast-moving sniper) - Adjusted pacing of early game story, pumping the breaks a little (~10%) on speed of start and speed of events - Improved secondary objective goals for Turns and Sec Level on certain levels where they were still too low - Upgraded Hype/Stress/Influence/Exposure Limit Break pop-up - Fixed issue where the Security Tally bar became a big colored bar without tallies

[ 2025-02-21 23:16:32 CET ] [ Original post ]