Update #235 is crash-landing onto the street of New Boston with more enemy improvements, removing the pause node in Daedelus Bloc, retirement screen improvements, the completion of a very expensive forehead reduction surgery project, improved generation of recruit starting levels, improved maps and props and more. We're hitting the push point here with a big wave of new coming for you - so buckle up. Updates are coming! We hope you are enjoying the game and the relentless pursuit of improvement, please take a moment to leave a review!

Retirement Improvements + Daedalus Finisher

With Update #235, we've made some improvements to the end game screens and the retirement system. This includes adding visual cards and multiple character results based off your story choices, Loyalty, level, class, backstory, tags and more. We're excited to see this system expanded and also to have pushed it to be fully non-destructive but determinant, meaning that every time you open the Retirement screen we're able to recreate (the same) retirement result for you. This is a powerful place to be and took a good deal of work, but it allows us to continuing to upgrade the visuals, text and possible results of your career even after you've retired and to see those changes filter down into any game that checks their retirement. So if we missed a cool retirement riff on some story choice and the community wants to see that honored, we can still make it happen and everyone can still see it appear in their retirement results. We have removed the pause node before the final mission of the Daedalus Bloc storyline. Good luck, Knights.

Improved AI Response Consistency

^^ Some dev visualization of the AI state/planning ^^ With Update #235, we've brought in the next wave of enemy agent improvements. This update is focused on consistency of responses and ensuring that the AI agents are following all of the rules of the game.

• Better handling of Stun results to ensure that, regardless of event type, the enemy are not rotating or reporting the event to the Sec AI.
• Same for Brain Wormed enemies, which were even worse than Stunned enemies.
• Ensuring that Head Hunters only pay attention to things they should - never stopping when they see a body, only caring about your mercs and local security.
• Fixing some cases where an enemy might be patrolling and not stop when they encounter something they should be paying attention to, such as half-spotting one of your mercs.
• Fixing a few final cases where rotation or movement vectors were wrong after encountering an event.

This upgrade really helps the AI behave in a more expected way throughout play. It really helps clean up, but the next big wave will be drive the actual upgrades in enemy intelligence with both local alert (enemy agents talking to and sharing status with other nearby agents), better ability to track security events and hunt around an area, fixing all the issues with and better fast forward turns (making everything skippable).

Fifth-head reduction surgery

It has taken too long to address this, but all the masculine character heads had extremely large foreheads. If you didn't notice, bless your heart. For all the rest of you, we've spared no expense on forehead reduction cranial surgery and the heads are much better sized now!

Better Recruit Levels

The level that a new recruit was starting in at was previously based off your Team Power Level. While this worked okay in the early game, it really started to fall apart in the late game as the squad's average is hitting 24 and your recruits are popping at level 6 or 8, so hopelessly behind they will never catch up. With Update #235, we've improved the rules for how starting level is calculated, switching over to basing it off your team's average level (including Knight, Face, all active mercs but not other potential recruits). Their starting level is 80% of the team average which gives them a strong starting point but still some work to catch up. This also means that a team that waters down its veteran ranks with a wave of new recruits will see its average dropping and with it the level of its last recruits. The Face will have something to say about this, but that is an update for just a little bit later.

High-Stakes Mission Marks

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A mistake was made where Power Play missions and the missions of the Daedalus Bloc storyline were not being marked as high-stakes missions. Woops! They are! Very important, those! Now marked!

Coyote Hot Drop Objective

We've improved the highlighting of the objective terminal in the Power Play mission COYOTE HOT DROP. This will puts extra emphasis on the individual nature of the area that your VIP needs to reach and access to exit, before you and the team need to find another exit.

v1.10.15 - #235: Push Point - 4/15/2025

- Removed pause node from late story Daedalus Bloc, final mission now available - Improved end game and retirement screen with visual slides, more character results, ability to update - Improved all enemy agent responses to events (Lure, spotting, sound, getting shot, etc) for consistency of response - Improved consistency of Stunned and Brain Worm effects on enemy agents (they can't report or rotate but do increase in alarm level) - Rebuilt math for recruit levels - they start at 80% of the team average Level - Fixed props with lack of sight line blocking and cover (box piles, glass tanks) - Improved highlight area around VIP terminal in COYOTE HOT DROP mission - Fixed Power Play missions and Daedalus Bloc missions not being marked as "high-stakes" correctly - Fixed reloading 9th Daedalus Bloc mission at a mid-mission point, patient might be missing

[ 2025-04-15 20:25:18 CET ] [ Original post ]