PATCH: SKILL REWORK AND A REBUILT SKILLS PAGE
Thanks @WzerW
Two skills that were dead weight are gone and two useful ones took their slots. Every point spent on the old two has been refunded. The skills page itself has been rebuilt so you can see what a point actually buys before you spend it.
WHY
BLACK BUDGET
NERVES OF STEEL
YOUR POINTS ARE BACK
THE SKILLS PAGE, REBUILT
EVERY RANK HAS ITS OWN BADGE
COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE TIMER
FIXES
Thanks @WzerW
Two skills that were dead weight are gone and two useful ones took their slots. Every point spent on the old two has been refunded. The skills page itself has been rebuilt so you can see what a point actually buys before you spend it.
WHY
- This came from a player report, and it was right. Skimming only ever cut the price of Hack and DDoS modules. You buy those once and then the skill does nothing for the rest of the game.
- Bypass Mastery only did anything while you were out of operation charges. If you played inside your charge allowance it was worth zero.
- Both have been replaced.
BLACK BUDGET
- Takes 10% per level off everything Operations bills you, not one narrow thing.
- That covers the NVC fee for forcing an attack through without a charge and the Shards price of Hack and DDoS modules.
- At level 3 a 300 Shard module costs 210, and the 0.50 NVC bypass fee becomes 0.35.
- The bypass fee is identical to what Bypass Mastery gave at every level. Nobody pays more than before. It simply covers more ground now.
- Sits in the Parasite branch where Skimming was.
NERVES OF STEEL
- Your win streak survives one failed operation per level each day. One at level 1, three at level 3.
- It also lets the streak bonus run one step higher per level, so the ceiling moves from +50% to +55%, +60% and +65%.
- The allowance only gets spent when a streak is actually running, so nothing is wasted at zero.
- The Agent tab tells you how many failures it can still absorb today, and the result screen says so when it catches one.
- Sits in the Phantom branch where Bypass Mastery was.
- Honest numbers: for somebody attacking hard all day this is worth roughly 10 to 17% more XP per day at level 3. For casual play it is smaller. It was deliberately kept down. An earlier draft of this skill more than doubled the streak bonus for strong players and was thrown out.
YOUR POINTS ARE BACK
- Every point anybody had put into Skimming or Bypass Mastery has been refunded and both skills reset to zero.
- Nobody gains or loses a point. You just get to spend them again, including on the two new ones if you want them.
- Check your SP on the skills page. If the number went up, that is why.
THE SKILLS PAGE, REBUILT
- Every skill now shows Right now next to what the next level gives you, with real numbers. No more guessing what a point is worth.
- The header carries your rank badge, your rank, your level and your skill points.
- The XP bar was lying to you. It measured your total XP against the next threshold, so it looked nearly full most of the time. It now shows progress inside your current level.
- The XP cards had the same problem. They struck out "+50" as the base rate, but the real base for an even odds target is 65 XP once the difficulty multiplier is counted. Fixed.
- Branches are colour coded, maxed skills are marked, and anything you can afford right now is highlighted.
- Holding the button to spend a point is unchanged. It is still deliberately slow so you cannot misclick a point away.
EVERY RANK HAS ITS OWN BADGE
- All six used to be the same hexagon with layers added on top, which meant they all looked alike.
- Each rank now has its own shape and its own animation. Script Kiddie a terminal plate with a blinking prompt, Runner a rising double arrow, Operator a crosshair, Infiltrator a traced hexagon, Spectre a shield with orbits, Ghost an eight pointed star.
- They show on your Agent card and next to every entry in the rank list, so you can see what is ahead of you.
COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE TIMER
- When your retaliations are spent, the panel now shows a live countdown to the next one instead of just telling you there are none left.
- The label also got corrected. It said "left today", which implied a reset at midnight. It is a rolling 24 hours from each retaliation you use, and the timer counts down to the exact moment the oldest one frees up.
FIXES
- Custom username styles now show in the hack and DDoS confirmation overlays. Target names were rendering plain because the styles were only being sent with full page loads, never with an overlay.
- The win streak display on the Agent tab now reflects your real ceiling instead of a hardcoded ten.